


A Cold Reading

by des_cieux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Enemies to Secret Teen Hookups, F/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum, Time Skips, To Don't Even Mention Her To Me to 10 Years of Earn Your Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2020-09-23 03:29:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 69,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20333326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/des_cieux/pseuds/des_cieux
Summary: If he were to trace the origins of his more personal resentment of her, the roots would stem from foolishly sitting down to watch a Muggle play in a London park.________________________________4/1 Note:  To anyone reading, I am so, so sorry that I don't see myself continuing this fic due to personal reasons (unless I lose my job, which could also happen any day now in this topsy-turvy economy). To anyone who took a chance on this WIP, thank you!! Please continue to take such chances on authors. Stay safe/healthy, and hopefully 2020 will become a better year.





	1. Part I / 1995 / England

** _ July 1995, Summer after Fourth Year  
London _ **

Muggle London, Draco’s inebriated mind can grudgingly admit, isn’t just a crude shadow of the Wizarding London he knows. Or perhaps, Blaise had directed them to the most tolerable corner, this sleekly stylish establishment fronted by a hostess who had arched her brows at the hologrammed identification card fished out of Blaise’s pocket before pocketing herself a flurry of colourful paper with much more hospitality. Sashaying ahead, she’d escorted them through one swanky bar to the back-of-the-room entrance to another. Her manicured talons parted velvet drapes to usher them into a more private enclosure of black marbled columns bordering lustrous gold-leafed alcoves, each harboring abundantly cushioned couches. Draco’s silent approval had risen further upon discovering that Muggle concoctions tasted generally sweeter than the unmixed liquors his father occasionally doled out. 

He’s mostly upright as he hauls himself out of the establishment, leaving Blaise to chat up a Muggle bartender while Theo rebuffed all attempts to socialize, and the fresh air instantly soothes Draco’s flushed face. Silly to panic, briefly, back in the bar that he could not handle another sip of those flaming Sambuca shots that Marcus had kept sliding over with an increasingly lopsided grin. Still, Draco decides a stomach-near-hurling moment later, a stroll around the block won’t detract from his night. Steadying himself first against stretches of stone wall and then wrought-iron gates of townhouses, he concentrates on marching his feet forward without staggering so he can return to the bar without embarrassing himself. Gradually, he realizes his path has transitioned into the leafy outskirts of a park, and a sudden loud surge of clapping catches his ear. 

Curiosity draws him deeper into the park until he’s stumbled onto the periphery of a clearing of seats half-encircling a lit platform. Under the spotlight, a teenage actor, whose clothing comes closer to resembling dress robes than typical Muggle wear, paces the stage before approaching another boy and demanding a very formally phrased, “What dost thou know?”

“Too well what love women to men may owe, in faith, they are as true of heart as we!” replies the other boy -- no, not a boy, Draco discerns as he descends further into the clearing, down past several aisles of seats. The second figure on the stage sports a noticeably fake mustache and a cap that can’t quite contain the tawny curls underneath. She’s pitching her voice lower than how she usually spouts out information in class, but Draco would recognize Hermione Granger’s frizz and overly impassioned voice and her undeniably girlish...aspects anywhere. Snorting his laughter at coming across Granger of all people, Draco sits back, relaxes, and promptly begins to doubt his returning sobriety as the most uptight, prissy swot of his lamentable awareness proceeds to snogging a boy for a whole crowd of Muggles to ogle.

Draco’s attended plays at Wizarding theatres of course, but he can only presume that he’d drowsed off to sleep before any scene akin to this one transpired. His jaw clenches, and he feels his throat, dry and parched again, inexplicably swallowing around nothing as his eyes remain hooked onto how Granger breaks apart the kiss. The profile of her face lingers close to the other actor’s though, and Draco wonders if the rest of the audience has eyes as keen as his for the finer details of her performance -- her dreamy close-eyed expression that ought to have looked vapid, her upper lip brushing her lower as if still tasting the kiss, her cheeks now flush with more than just stage lighting. 

Draco coughs into his fist to clear his throat and hunkers down for the rest of the show. Opportunities to watch Blaise flirt and Marcus get drunk abound, but he figures that a chance to watch Granger make a fool of herself in front of a live audience is too good to pass up.

Except she doesn’t completely flounder on stage at all. Her Viola character strikes him as the most sensible of the lovestruck lot, and it’s amusing to watch Granger play the part of a girl disguised as a boy caught in the crossfire of some romantic triangle. He certainly imagines his mind will replay the scene of Granger leaning in to nearly kiss another girl. 

When most of the attendees around him start to stand and clap as the show concludes, Draco rises as well, lazily slapping his hands together while scanning the crowd for an easy exit. His scrutiny arcs back across the stage and then freezes there because staring straight back at him now is Granger, her spine rigid after unfolding from a bow. Pageboy cap off and curls spilling across her shoulders, she looks the same as she would on a school weekend, as if they’d unexpectedly crossed paths in the hallways, but for her fearful expression. 

Draco rolls his eyes. Considering the dramatic cohorts she runs around with, her overthinking brain probably imagines that he’s about to openly flout the Statute of Secrecy and cause some scene to terrorize this Muggle congregation. 

Moving nimbly through the crowd, he’s almost near the edge of the clearing when Granger slips out from between two people and plants herself, one hand on her hip and the other reaching into her pocket, in front of him.

“What are you doing here, Malfoy?”

“Decided it wasn’t worth wasting my time sitting through a whole term of Muggle Studies when I could just receive a free crash course instead. Thanks for the show, Granger. Weasley know you spend your summers snogging Muggle blokes for people’s entertainment?”

Two splotches of ruddiness color her cheeks. “I don’t think Ron would care. Besides,” she says more primly, “this was Shakespeare, and it’s not like I scripted this rendition.”

“It’s romantic babbleydook.”

“Just because you didn’t study Elizabethan English and can’t follow a plot --”

“Granger, I understood the basic plot just fine. I just think Viola’s too clever to pair up with someone who can’t even recognize that she’s a girl. Let’s hope you don’t end up the same way.”

Her brow scrunches, and it’s his turn to color up self-consciously as he more fully absorbs his own words. Before Draco can sharpen his opinion with a more customary barb to reaffirm her overall lack of appeal, a couple closes in to flank both sides of Granger.

“Splendid job up there, sweetheart,” her father says as he wraps an arm around Granger’s shoulders to squeeze her in a half-hug. “To think you were all nervous yesterday and ready to drop out. We couldn’t hear a single waver in your voice. Though, I didn’t know they were going to have you kiss Simon Booth’s son. Shouldn’t they get parental permission before they include that in the script? Oh, and who’s this?”

“Dad. Mum. This is a schoolmate from Hogwarts,” Granger informs them, pronouncing each sparse word of introduction with great precision and sparing nary a word more.

With a pointed glance, Granger’s mum tsks her daughter. “Schoolmates have names, don’t they Hermione? Pleasure to meet you, Mr. --?”

Her mother extends a hand, and Granger’s fingers are sneaking into her pocket again, likely preparing to hex him if he doesn’t shake her mother’s hand. 

“Draco Malfoy,” he smoothly introduces himself. If anything, his tone is even more polite than what he would use with his friends’ parents after running around in the same circles for years and since some Pureblood mothers with daughters tend to act overly familiar with him. “I’m in London with some friends, and it just happened to be my good luck to see Hermione outside of school.”

Next to her parents’ matching expressions of receptive affability, Granger’s face is laughably sour as Draco drops her first name as casually as if he used it all the time in school. Admittedly, he doesn’t even remember the last time he said ‘Hermione’ out loud, and it feels slightly surreal to use her first name in a conversation with her Muggle parents as she crosses her arms and tries to not appear outright hostile towards him. Behind her, the strung-up lights shed a luminosity that flatters Granger, despite her pout.

“Do you like Shakespeare, Draco?” her mum asks.

Shakespeare. Right. The Muggle that wrote this laughable rubbish.

“Oh absolutely,” Draco assures her, tossing Granger a beatific smile. She’s not the only one who can indulge in make-believe. “Unmatched brilliance. He’s definitely my favorite playwright.”

“You hear that, darling?” Granger’s mother nudges her. “Some do naturally appreciate Shakespeare from an early age.” 

Lowering her voice conspiratorially to Draco, her mum shares, “Hermione hated her name when she was younger, you know. _ The Winter’s Tale _ isn’t actually our favorite play, but we wanted a memorable name for her, and Ophelia seemed a little too foreboding --”

“Hermione’s pretty tragic too, Mum,” mutters the one who doesn’t seem to appreciate her namesake. 

“Yes, well anyway, if you’d like to come back for another play, here’s the rest of the summer schedule.”

Draco takes the brochure, titled ‘Shakespeare in the Park,’ figuring initially that he’ll just toss it into the next rubbish bin he sees. Then, he notices how Granger’s eyes track the handing over of the flyer with irritation. 

“I’m so glad you gave me this, Mrs. Granger,” he thanks her with sincerity. “I think I’ll bring some other schoolmates from our year next time.”

A high-pitched fake laugh from Granger. “Aren’t you forgetting about that extended, continental vacation you and your gang take every July? Speaking about classmates, it’s getting late, and I think I’d better make sure you find your way back to wherever they are. Shall we?”

She hasn’t laid a hand on him since punching him in the face third year so when she grabs his sleeve and tugs him not gently away from her parents, a jolt runs up his arm. 

As soon as they’re out of her parents’ sight, her fingers dart to snatch the pamphlet. Draco barely manages to stuff the offending paper halfway past the belt of his right hip’s waistline before her hands twitch and retreat, not committed enough in their quest to touch him there. 

“I swear, Malfoy, that if I see any member of your clique here next week, you’ll find yourself transfigured into a permanent rodent before we so much as disembark from the Hogwarts Express this September.”

“Calm your blood-and-thunder hissing, Granger. Shouldn’t you be more appreciative that some of us are trying to expose ourselves to more of Muggle culture?”

“You condescending --”

“Granger, tell you what. I seem to have taken quite a detour from my original excursion so if you help point me in the direction of a certain bar, I’ll trade you this flyer. Deal?”

“Of course you’d be the type to drink underage,” she mumbles before nodding. “Fine. What’s the name of the place?”

That’s a good question, and Draco scrapes the boundaries of his memory for some recollection of a name on the bar’s door, or on a napkin or glass. “I think it began with an S.”

“Alright, well what’s the name of the last street you remember passing?”

Another reasonable question. Draco remembers neat blocks of townhouses with packed lines of those Muggle boxes with wheels, but zilch about street signs. It had felt more urgently necessary, he recalls, back then to focus on not puking on his shoes. 

“Okay, what about shop names, station names, landmarks?”

“There was something called a Tesco,” he offers, and she looks ready to wallop him.

Eventually, after surveying a park map, he’s certain that the Portkey had dropped them near the river, and the bar had been attached to a hotel so Granger rattles off a line of hotel names before landing on one that sounds vaguely more familiar than the others.

“What are you, my personal escort?” he remarks as she sets off, glancing sharply back to make sure she hasn’t lost him like a naughty child. 

“I’m not going to leave you alone in some part of town you’ve never been to before,” she says simply.

“Is this what it’s like being Potter or Weasley? Having saintly Granger save me from being personally responsible for my failings?”

He’s watching her reaction and not the street as he lifts a foot to cross, and she promptly shoves him backwards as a double-decker bus comes hurtling past their faces. 

“You were polite to my parents,” she says by way of explanation. “When I expected you to be awful. And you’d probably hex some poor stranger if you just continued to wander lost through London so I figure I’m doing the world a favor by delivering you back to your friends.”

His longer legs result in greater stretches of stride, but Granger’s power-walking block after block as if she can’t wait to get rid of him. It’s late though, and as they cross into a neighborhood populated by boozehounds lumbering out of pubs to smoke and leer at anyone with an arse and legs, he reasons that the rush makes sense because she also has to somehow return to her parents.

“How are you going to get back?”

“I’ll manage.”

“You sure _ you _ don’t need a chaperone to head back or a --” he waves his hand at one of those boxes transporting Muggles through the streets. 

“A cab?” And now, her voice turns coy. “You offering to pay for my ride? Do you even have any quid on you?”

At his blank look, she clarifies, “Money. Muggle money. Though I’m sure a cabbie wouldn’t turn down a brick of gold.”

He doesn’t of course, but he’s sure Blaise has more of that colourful paper. 

“So why a Muggle bar tonight?” she asks, finally slowing her pace enough so that passerby don’t keep glancing twice at them curiously, either perceiving an angry girlfriend stomping off after a tiff with a boy or a girl being stalked. 

“Blaise dared us that we couldn’t handle Muggle alcohol.”

“Guess he was right considering you looked ready to pass out in the audience.”

“No, that was from my disbelief that they cast someone completely lacking in charm in the lead female role.”

“God or whatever deity is up there, I hope you get alcohol poisoning before we graduate.”

They both speed up their steps in sullen silence until he asks, “You saw me from the stage?”

“I kept praying that I was just having a minor hallucination, but it was hard to miss the stage light bouncing off your blonde head.”

“Well, I definitely wasn’t about to pass out. It’s hardly my first time getting sloshed, and alcohol here is like alcohol anywhere.” The words sound immediately stupid to himself, and on second thought, they resonate as even more frustrating. He should say something to dilute the potential of such words, something to assert that actually, his father’s liquors in crystal decanters at home are undeniably superior, but then, they arrive at the entrance of a hotel that is finally familiar to Draco’s entirely sober self.

“We’re here so give me the pamplet, and I’ll be off.” Granger’s arms are crossed protectively over her front again, and he can tell that she definitely does not want to see or be seen by his fellow Slytherins. 

In the distance, a bell chimes low. Several times. And the night air feels crisp now. “Granger, stay here for five minutes, alright? I need to get something. Then I’ll give you back the bloody flyer.”

“What are you --?”

He darts off before she can snatch it out of his hand, and he half-expects her to either chase him into the hotel or to just hightail it back home, but when Draco comes back out a few minutes later with Muggle notes in his grasp, she’s still standing there, chin jutted out mulishly.

“Did you tell your friends --"

“No. Alright? Here, take this.” His right hand shoves all the money and the brochure into her loose grip while his left hand waves for one of those cabs. 

“Did you even count this?” she sputters. “I don’t need all this, it’s probably a ten minute ride at most.”

“Then use the rest to buy yourself a better mustache for the next play,” Draco lightly replies, evading her jabbing attempts to return the money. “Stop trying to stab me with your nails, Granger. Just get in before this man decides he’d prefer a more cooperative customer.”

With a huff, she slides into the cab and mutters “thank you” through the window at him. 

“Couldn’t quite catch that, Granger, but that’s alright. You can tell me next week.”

“What?” she mouths at him as the car leaves the curb.

As if he needs a flyer to remember the name of the park after she made him stare at a map for so long. “Hansel and Gretel was it? 7:30 pm sharp? Can’t wait to see you act like a witch for once.”

Through the back of the cab’s glass window, Draco sees her furiously shaking her head at him and merely responds with a mocking wave goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you're trying to enjoy the sights in London, but your heart is also flipping out over seeing two particular actors' Instagram photos of their vacation (together omg!), you might end up writing fanfic to soothe your soul ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. Chapter 2

His parting words had been a joke of course. Preposterous to even contemplate attending another one of Granger’s performances. Sitting through Twelfth Night last time had provided an unobjectionable diversion while sobering up. Going to London again however, not for drinks, but to consciously view a _ Muggle _ play would be a ludicrous waste of time. Draco’s confident in this mindset for most of the following week, but on the following Wednesday, he pictures Granger bristling with apprehension about whether or not he will actually show up, and a mirroring anticipation has built up in him by Friday morning, one day before the next scheduled play.

Among his friends, he’s never been the one to initiate the bar-hopping revelries, but he could slide a suggestion to Blaise to take them somewhere near the park again. Just in case the play turns out to be unimaginative tripe, which it most likely will be. Upon further reflection, Draco’s estimation of that Orsino character last week has sunk even lower; how could that man so promptly turn around and court a girl who’d tricked him? How could clever, resourceful Viola accept Orsino’s fickle affections as genuine when he’d spent most of the play pining after another woman? 

Compared to the magic of Wizarding theatre, Muggle plays were hogwash, Draco resolutely determines after Friday breakfast while lounging, bored, in his room. The mise-en-scène in the park had appeared so minimal, so lacking relative to the illumination and pyrotechnics and magnified scale of everything on Wizarding stages. 

Still, seeing it was Granger up there...at the time, he had not felt the urge to look anywhere else. 

Customarily for summer holidays, his parents would have whisked him away by now to the south of France or to the Italian coastline, but as the empty seat at the head of the table during breakfast had reminded Draco, his father has not come home for five days now. When he closes his eyes, the black-draped Great Hall of Hogwarts during last term’s memorial feast for Diggory flashes across his mind. He reaches to unbutton his collar, pressing against his own jugular in search of the source rendering his throat so constricted. His father is likely meeting with the Dark Lord personally, and here he sits idly with the gall to wonder if he could perchance run into a Mudblood on a weekend excursion again. 

He’s near buried the possibility in his imagination’s more recessed caverns when his fireplace kindles alight with green fire, and Theo Nott’s unexpected head emerges within the licks of flame.

“Any weekend plans, Malfoy?”

As opposed to most other Slytherins, Theo has rarely sought to carve out a rapport with Draco and has never shown any interest in cultivating an acquaintance beyond trading mutual smiles of borderline patronizing acknowledgment whenever they cross paths at school or at their parents’ respective homes. Draco’s mouth slants into one of those smiles right now as he answers, “Weighing some options. What’s it to you, Theo?”

“Well, just in case you were planning on attending a play tomorrow in London, Hermione’s asked that you reconsider your potential presence.”

Draco had hoped to keep his expression neutral and bored, but his brows automatically arch toward his hairline. “Did Granger ask you to convey that to me?”

“Yes.”

“I thought Gryffindor was the House of the brave. Is she so daunted by me that she can’t Floo or Owl me herself?”

Theo chuckles. “Yes, I do imagine that she probably feels some sense of trepidation at directly contacting a Pureblood household. Shouldn’t you be grateful though that a bit of caution keeps your parents from discovering your newfound appreciation for Muggle theatre?”

Tensing at Theo’s latter words but managing an indifferent shrug, Draco counters, “Is that what she said? I was just looking for a place to sober up last week, but Granger and her Muggle theatre troupe rather ruined my breather in the park. Can’t believe she actually thought I would suffer through another night of that farce they regard as theatre.”

“Whatever you say. Right, well, I’ve conveyed the message, and I have to meet her in half an hour so a farewell to you.”

“Wait, you’re meeting Granger today?”

“Yes.” Theo trots the affirmation out as if it’s a universally known fact that he hangs out with Granger on Fridays, but Draco would wager his Nimbus 2004 that a layer of smugness coats the other boy’s voice.

“Are you that lacking in friends that you’re looking to Mudbloods for company?” Ordinarily, Draco wouldn’t speak to peers, not that he has many even amongst Slytherins, with such an overtone, but it’s better than blatantly demanding ‘what for?’ and ‘why you?’

“You’re not wrong that I don’t have many Mudblood acquaintances, but it’s not so much socializing we’ll be doing today.”

Theo’s deliberately inserted pause, Draco gauges, is intended to draw out the itching vexation.

“She’s helping me with some shopping.”

“Granger. Who wears the same baggy Muggle denims every time she’s out of uniform. That’s the person you’re choosing to go shopping with? Theo, did you smash your head somewhere and wake up with the inexplicable need to acquire some hideous sweaters?”

“Oh it’s not that kind of shopping.” Surrounded by green flames, Theo’s face achieves an aura of malevolence. “You’re curious, aren’t you? Want to come with?”

* * *

Unlike Diagon Alley, the avenue they arrive at is much broader and beset with glowing signs, but the crowds here similarly teem with overloaded hands, clutching at apt-to-wander-off brats and hoisting brand-emblazoned shopping bags.

Granger, glancing down at her watch, shows up a block away exactly two minutes before the scheduled time, appearing unenthused to see either of them. She’s in denims as usual, but she bends briefly to retrieve a dropped knick knack for a child, and these jeans cling to her waist and hips and fine, he’s looking at her arse. If anyone around here should be wearing looser pants, he determines, it’s not Granger. Draco really wouldn’t mind watching Granger walk towards him for another few blocks. 

“Theo. Care to explain your companion?” she says in lieu of greeting.

“It struck me that after watching your play last week, Draco might also be interested in other Muggle productions.”

“Doubt it,” Draco cuts in. “But Theo’s got pretty sophisticated taste so thought I might as well come check out what’s got him so interested in a Muggle shopping trip.”

“Marvelous,” Granger remarks with absolutely no sincerity. Pivoting on her heel, she moves to cross the street. “Store’s this way.”

She walks more briskly than both of them at first, and then as Draco speeds up, she drops back to amble purposely behind him, in step with Theo.

“Where’s the book?” Draco hears her murmur.

Glancing over his shoulder, he sees Theo extract a pouch from his trouser pocket and reach into the pouch to produce a heavy-looking tome.

“Extension charm,” Theo explains.

Granger does not appear impressed. “What about the other one?”

“Relax. Half now, half later. To make sure you keep up with your side of the transaction.”

With a churlish sound of impatience, Granger outpaces both of them again to fling open a store door under the bright logo, ‘Motorola.’ The store looks barely stocked, Draco notes doubtfully as he follows her inside. Only a handful of tables and wall-mounted displays, each presenting neat rows of black palm-sized devices with black cords fixing them in place. Picking one up, Granger flips it open, revealing numbered buttons.

“So they shrunk the battery for this new model, but you can also chat for a longer span of time. What my dad’s friend kept talking about though was -- here, take this one, and I’m going to grab that other one.” Moving to the end of the table, Granger selects another device, her fingers nimbly tapping a sequence of buttons.

Inspecting the one in his hands, Theo laughs, and Draco looks over his shoulder to read on the device’s rectangular green face: ‘I’ve never seen Malfoy look so out of place.’

“Oh I’m going to have fun with this one,” Theo remarks.

Granger nods. “With these newer models, it’s going to be like having the Floo network and the Owl Postal Service in the palm of your hand. There’s a sales associate over there who can probably give you more specific information since I’ve only handled mobile phones a couple of times. Come find me when you’re ready to check out.”

As Theo saunters away, Granger’s incessantly intense eyes cross with Draco’s, and she slides an envelope across the table at him.

“Thanks again for the cab ride,” she says quietly. “Here’s the rest of that money.”

Draco glances at it distastefully. “Granger, just keep it. Blaise and I don’t exactly have that much use for Muggle money, and it’s not worth the bother converting it back. If you used it to get a new wardrobe, our charitable contribution would probably qualify for a tax deduction.”

With a sharp twist of her wrist, she flicks the envelope at his chest. “I was going to use it as a deposit for Theo’s phone purchase today, but on second thought, I’d rather spend every penny I have before accepting your charity.”

“But you did climb into the cab last week,” he points out.

“Yes, well I’ll thank Blaise the next time I see him considering it was actually his money.” She fiddles with one of the black devices, jabbing at numbers and arrows before she feels the need to reassure herself, “Please tell me you’re not coming to the play tomorrow.”

“Why Granger, you keep reminding me about this play when I’d totally forgotten. Do you want me to come, is that it?”

She tilts her head to look towards the heavens in silent plea. “Mum’s right. Men are delusional.”

“My presence might even enhance your acting, Granger. Think about it, you’ll be trying so hard to impress me --”

“No,” she disavows with a charming shake of her curls. “I most definitely will not be trying to do that. Besides, there’s nothing to impress tomorrow. You’ll find it a complete waste of time. I don’t even have any lines because I’m playing a bird.”

She’d looked perfectly fetching last week in her pageboy outfit; why would any sane man put her in a ridiculous getup with feathers? “Harsh judge, your theatre director. Even I didn’t think your acting was bad enough to relegate you to the role of a bird --”

“It’s because we alternate speaking and non-speaking roles,” she retorts coolly. “So if you have a speaking role one week, it’s two weeks before you have your next speaking part with more time to memorize your lines.”

Another week...when he’d imagined that he would at least briefly see her tomorrow.

“What are these things anyway?” he shifts to asking, pressing random series of numbers into a device's display.

She gestures at the gadget in his hands. “Hold on a sec. I’m going to go to the back of the room and make a call. When you hear your phone ring, press that green button, alright?”

Draco watches as she heads to the back wall and lift a bulkier version of the device to her ear. A moment later, his phone both vibrates and rings, piercingly shrill, in his grip. Cautiously, he mirrors her action in holding it to his ear while pressing the button as she instructed. 

“Hey,” her voice breathes into his ear...through the phone, and it’s acutely intimate to hear her voice like this when she’s never stood so close to him before.

“It’s like what I said before, this phone combines the Floo Network and Owl Post in one little package that can fit in your pocket, even without an extension charm.”

“Hmm, tiring for one’s hand though.”

“You poor patrician. Unused to heavy lifting of any kind. Oh come on, would you rather be met with the terrifying sight of someone’s head floating in your fireplace or have the convenience of communicating without such a sight?”

“This is a...marginally better experience than seeing Theo’s head this morning. The fire makes him look possessed.”

She laughs, lower and more throaty through the mouthpiece.

“Are you going to get one of these?” he asks.

“Oh heavens no. These cost over one thousand pounds. Theo likes expensive toys, he practically salivated when I showed him the computer, but I’m fine with just my phone at home.”

Draco glances at Theo animatedly conversing with the sales associate. Of all the Slytherins to match Arthur Weasley in enthusiasm for Muggle inventions, Draco would not have bet on usually withdrawn Theo. “Why are you showing him all this anyway?”

A beat of silence on her end. “Oh you know, quid pro quo. We were paired up in Arithmancy one day, and I started talking to him about how it reminded me of Muggle cryptography, which led to me discussing computers with Theo. So I’ve been showing him some Muggle technology, and in return, he lends me some books from his family’s personal library.”

Left unmentioned in all this, Draco gleans, is that Nott Senior definitely does not know about this exchange. Useful to know about this facet to Theo who was such a blank slate just a day ago, but it could equally be said, Draco surmises, that Theo has learned something useful about him today.

“Alright Granger,” Theo says, waving her over. “Seeing as I don’t have my solicitor around, I’m going to need you to walk me through this service contract and make sure that I’m not being hoodwinked.”

Several pages of paperwork requiring Theo’s flourish of a signature later, they exit the store, Theo between them toting his bagged purchase. 

“So a thousand and four hundred pounds is a large sum is it?” Theo comments, scanning the receipt after the salespeople had repeatedly asked whether they ought to have their parents present to approve the purchase.

Granger winces at the mere repetition of the amount. “I heard phones are cheaper in America, but yes, I only know a couple of my dad’s friends who have these right now.”

“Noted. Thanks for the confirmation that Draco and I are filthy rich.” Theo waggles his eyebrows at her. “Which means we have money to buy more trifles. Is there one of those video game stores around here? You were telling me about Doom --”

“Actually, I have to run,” Granger blurts out, her widened eyes darting back and forth between their faces and past Theo’s right shoulder. 

Draco shifts slightly, but all he identifies is a luxury timepiece store. 

“I have to go meet someone else actually so uh, Theo, about that second book?”

From his pocket’s pouch, Theo retrieves another book, and Granger’s fingers flit hastily to stuff it into her own modified bag, but Draco manages to catch a glimpse of the embossed title: ‘Genealogy of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.’

It is the last book Draco would expect Hermione Granger to apparently devour as summer reading. He raises his gaze to meet Granger’s eyes, but she’s already hurrying off, her arse in those jeans a distraction again. 

When he returns his attention to Theo, he knows his ogling was nowhere near subtle. “You know Malfoy, if you happen to want to test out these phone contraptions yourself some time, I’d be willing to share her number.”

* * *

“I didn’t know you had so many Slytherin friends,” Sirius remarks, his tone light, yet still making it sound as targeted as an accusation. Under a full dosage of Polyjuice, he’d blended in with the rest of the afternoon shopping throng, just another hapless father waiting around for his family to finish perusing while he safeguarded their bags. Per his earlier memo to her, he’d snagged her attention when he’d stopped outside of the Breitling boutique to unfold a newspaper to the Arts section. 'Wait for me to start walking again and to turn the corner,' he’d instructed, 'and then meet me two blocks down that direction.'

“Hardly be accurate to call those two my friends,” Hermione mutters back. “‘Friendly’ isn’t in Malfoy’s vocabulary, and at school, he’s more staunchly devoted to causing trouble than to studying.”

“Then it sounds like young Malfoy and I do indeed share some family traits.”

“There’s no way you were as loathsome as he is,” she contests. “What he says to me, or to Ron or Harry, it’s beyond mean --”

“My lot and I were beyond mean too, back when we were in school.”

“Did you or Professor Lupin or Harry’s father ever call anyone a Mudblood?”

“No,” Sirius says firmly. “That we did not. Never.” 

“Well, Malfoy’s called me that to my face. Several times.” Hermione grits out the additional point, half to inform Sirius and half to reaffirm it to herself because sure, the git had been civil this afternoon, but that’s nowhere close to dissolving the familiar stain of his sneers towards her general existence at Hogwarts. 

“He didn’t seem that...keen on insulting you back there when I saw you three.”

“Oh he was tolerable today. Probably because Theo was there. Or maybe because Harry and Ron aren’t around.”

“So he’s...more tolerable when he’s not around your other male friends?”

Hermione glances warily up at the older man. “I wouldn’t phrase it like that. It’s more like we’re not at school, and Malfoy doesn’t have a pack of Slytherin toadies to entertain. Theo doesn’t count because he’s a loose cannon in his own way.”

“Still. Back there, my cousin reminded me of someone.”

“Who?”

“Harry’s father actually. I’ll tell you about it after I give you a tour of the house.”

“So this is…”

“Headquarters,” Sirius confirms. “Dilapidated old house to match the grandeur of our Order. It used to be much more impressive and --” A line of dust balls bounces away as the door groans open. “Cleaner back in my mother’s day, but Kreacher won’t listen to a word I say about cleaning.”

“Then you should respect his wish to not tidy up after humans,” she says sharply. 

“Oh he doesn’t object to all people. Just those associated with my reprehensible self. Even when I was a boy, Kreacher would do anything to clean up my brother’s messes, but me...he’s been commiserating hourly with my mother’s portrait over my inheriting the house.”

Easily, Hermione can envision the four stories of 12 Grimmauld Place in their former glory. On the topmost floor, Sirius holds up a finger of caution with his other hand on a doorknob, and Hermione prepares herself to face another boggart or doxy flying out at them.

“I must warn you. I had rather appalling decorative taste as a teenage boy.”

“Don’t worry,” Hermione tells him cheerfully. “That probably describes the majority of teenage boys.”

Past the door not roped off with a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, comforting colors of red and gold adorn Sirius’ room. A lion banner on the wall greets her. A Gryffindor scarf remains coiled around one of the bedposts. What Sirius was likely more apprehensive to disclose, Hermione presumes, were the Muggle posters, some exhibiting Harley motorcycles and some featuring girls on a beach tanning their ample cleavage.

“I’ve seen rooms much more scandalous,” Hermione says honestly. One boy at the beginning of fourth year had dropped a poster while moving back in for the fall term, and the outwardly unassuming reel of paper had unrolled to reveal a woman with literally pendulous breasts in the sense that they oscillated, and even Hermione had felt a little fixated by the motion.

“That’s the whole house then,” Sirius concludes, relaxing on the bed with one leg perched on the other’s knee. “I bought the cleaning supplies before we met up, but I think we can hold off on the actual cleaning for now. Arthur and Molly will be here in a week or so with Ron, and we’ll get Harry by the end of the summer so the more hands on deck, the better for purifying this place. Since you were in the city today, thought I might as well give you the first exclusive look.”

“Oh...thanks. Harry would probably be pretty jealous if he hears that.”

Sirius shrugs. “Don’t they always say that boys are generally less mature than girls?” 

Silence falls between them as Hermione moves through the room with inquisitive scrutiny, and Sirius looks at her quickly a few times, giving her the instinctive sense that whatever he’s about to voice is something he would not say in front of Harry or Ron.

“Hermione,” he begins slowly. “If you do run into Malfoy again this summer --”

“Oh no, that’s definitely not going to happen again --”

“If you don’t want it to, of course, you shouldn’t have to go out of your way. To interact with someone who’s been --”

“Foul, vile, and cruel to me ever since the day we met,” Hermione reminds him, voice edged with nervousness. 

In the far corner of the room, she tries to focus on inspecting a cluster of Muggle movie posters. A couple of James Bond flicks. _The Godfather_. _A New Hope_. She smiles again just at the sight of these. 

“Yes,” Sirius agrees, but his eyes are distant. “It’s just that -- I remember. Vividly. That first flare of curiosity. About Muggle music and movies and their lives.”

Hermione releases a dry laugh. “You’re different. You were different. I assure you. Malfoy, who probably dines off plates of solid gold, would find little of interest in my mundane life.”

“If he were though --” Sirius starts, and something on Hermione’s face compels him to pull back on this strand of mad ideas. Or attempt to at least. “I’m sorry. Truly. Forget that I even mentioned this. Really. You should just forget this conversation ever happened. You should go home.”

* * *

Regardless of magical ancestry, Hermione contemplates later that night as her eyes skim across the comparatively tame walls of her room at home, people crave what’s off limits. Like if you tell a child to not play in that spot or not touch that article, the child’s sticky fingers tend to itch to break the rules.

She groans to herself, fingers pressing against her temples. It’s easier to think in terms of childish analogies, but those more innocent comparisons carry a whisper of self-delusion. What her mind keeps flitting back to are the James Bond posters with women in slinky gowns on Sirius’ walls, picking up _ Memoirs of a Geisha _in an airport bookshop when she was twelve and reading steadily through the parts that made her cheeks flame because it was the only book she brought on that particular vacation, and the other fanciful realms where women wield a smile like a knife.

Her eyes return to the books borrowed from Theo. Not exactly leisure reading, these volumes on pureblood genealogy and blood magic enchantments. She’s more doubtful about the potential usefulness of the Genealogy text. From what Ginny recalled of Riddle’s diary, he could proclaim himself the Pureblood descendant of Salazar Slytherin all he wanted, but Hermione had already scoured through most of the family trees to confirm the apparent lack of documented pedigree. Riddle had not been a trotted out and openly recognized heir like Malfoy, she concludes as she closes the book for the night. Requesting the Genealogy records could turn out to be a complete waste of time, but the inkling that it could lead somewhere had compelled her to ask for it, and any edge of information she could contribute to the Order would be worth it.

Reaching out to Draco could play out like that, she reasons. Because her brain hasn’t ceased analyzing how Malfoy was not a complete troll earlier. 

One set of knowledge exchanged for another. This analogy soothes her. Choosing...to engage more and see what he has to offer isn’t so different from conducting a transaction. She’d keep it impersonal.

Strictly transactional of course. 

* * *

All things considered, Draco should be thrilled where he’s currently sitting. Top box seats at Bodmin Moor Millenium Stadium, and he’s so close to one goalpost that he can feel the ripples in the atmosphere as Quaffles hurtle through. To boot, his favorite team Puddlemere United is out there, and around him flock several Slytherins from his year, save for Astoria Greengrass whose older sister insisted on her attendance. 

“So we agree that Daphne’s sister is going to turn out even prettier than her?” Marcus nudges him.

Draco grunts a lack of an opinion on the matter. For all he might have looked up to Marcus when he was a puny second year, he’s rapidly adopting the outlook that Marcus should start hanging out with Slytherins his own age. 

“Flint, kindly move your block head so I can see the score.”

Draco knows the score, or knows with certainty at least that Puddlemere’s tally is several times the multiple of the Chudley Cannons’, but the scoreboard also shows the time remaining in this drag of a game because he’s finding to his rising displeasure that it really isn’t fun when one team is outright annihilating the other. 

Granger’s play, he vaguely registers, is probably breaking for intermission right about now. Not that it matters when she’s playing a bird. Flint’s side eye tells him he should probably stop chuckling to himself at the mental image of Granger as a bird, but fuck it, it’d be more entertaining than viewing the Chudley Keeper let another Quaffle sail past him. He feels like he’s watching a replay on repeat; even Weasley would be less incompetent out on the pitch.

“Draco. Mate.” Theo’s hand claps down on on his shoulder. Overfamiliar weirdo. What does Granger see in him anyway? “Can I borrow you for a minute?”

Theo doesn’t explain why until they’re out of the box and so far down the hallway that they’re almost at the restrooms.

“I got a frisky kitten on the other end, just clawing to chat to you. Don’t fret. You can thank me later. I’ll inform the rest of the gang that you’re currently occupied with constipation.” Theo slaps his newly procured phone into Draco’s surprised grip and pivots back towards the stadium. 

“Theo, what the --”

“Theo?” A tentative voice questions from the phone.

“Uh, no. Draco, actually.”

“Oh, hey.” Sounding as intimately close by as she had in the store yesterday.

He’d never admit it to her out loud, but he likes this cellular phone thing. 

“Hey Granger,” he says back as he shoulders open the bathroom door and shuts it behind him. “You covered in feathers right now?”

“Mmm, not quite. Limited costume budget so they just gave me a leftover set of angel wings from another play. I think I’m wearing the same thing in August for Juliet. Are you...busy right now?”

“No. I’m not,” he replies honestly. 

“Ok. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I do...appreciate that you’d be willing to learn about Muggle things. So I’m retracting my objections to your presence at future plays. That is, if you want to come.”

He’s barely restraining a smirk at his own reflection in the mirror because there’s no one around he’d trust enough to whom he could exult about this invitation.

“Next Saturday at seven-thirty right? I’ll check my schedule.”

“Seven this time actually. Also, Draco --”

Later, he reflects that he probably would have agreed to anything she proposed because his name from her mouth curls like a pleasingly phrased charm into his ear.

“My theatre group is going to see a film this coming week,” she continues. “Wouldyouliketocomewith?”

He doesn’t instantly respond. Honestly, everyone at school with at least two functioning brain cells agreed that Muggle Studies was a joke of an elective and thus, he'd figured he would never need it, but why were there so many alien terms that he couldn’t quite decipher from context?

“No pressure of course,” she rushes to fill in the silence. “I just thought it might be informative since the film’s apparently related to theatre. I don’t even know if it’s good though the reviews have said it’s reportedly good. You know what, check your schedule, and --”

“Granger, what day is the film?”

A banging on the bathroom door followed by Theo’s head poking inside. “We both know I’m rich, Draco, but they charge me like a pound per minute for calls so close the deal, will you?”

Draco shoves the door back shut, briefly jamming it on Theo’s hand. He’ll have to find another time to laugh in Theo’s face that worrying about a pound per minute only establishes that Nott is a miser. 

“Granger, what day is the film?” he repeats as if he has all the time in world. He can certainly afford to pay for more of her time. 

“Wednesday,” she says breathlessly. Sweetly. Thrillingly. “I’ll see you this Wednesday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As 'Clueless' reminded me, cellphones were such a newfangled thing in 1995.


	3. Chapter 3

Had Draco known that general society disapproved of one freely vocalizing opinions on a film during the showing of said film, he might not have so readily agreed to this excessively demanding commitment of staying mostly silent for two bloody hours.

“Shhh!” hisses another theatre patron from behind them for the third time. 

Draco savors the fleeting vision of permanently muzzling that grouch’s voice with a curse before Granger’s right hand slides to lightly balance on his white-knuckled grip.

“Murder in public is highly frowned upon,” she leans in to whisper. 

“Why is he shushing us anyway? That couple over there has just been incessantly snogging for the last ten minutes.”

Granger’s gaze follows the direction of his gesturing hand, her lips quirking as she spots the couple, before returning to lock with his. “Probably because snogging is largely a muted activity.”

“Depends how you do it,” he snipes, earning another upward quirk of her lips. 

They’re sequestered nearly a whole row’s length away from the rest of her theatre group, Granger having insisted upon their migration after he’d commented on almost every pre-movie trailer. 

It -- because Draco is not quite sure if this qualifies as a date, or if Granger is approaching this rendezvous as another opportunity to educate him -- had felt awkward at first. If he had been a fish out of water at the phone shop, then he assuredly felt even more so upon meeting her at the front of the theatre followed by a flurry of introductions to her Muggle friends he wouldn’t remember anyway.

“Co-ed boarding school in Scotland, how quaint!” one of the Muggle girls had cooed. “So are you two, um, a thing or --”

“No, not even close,” Granger had answered blithely. “Just a schoolmate I’m showing around town.”

Not even a friend. An upgrade though, he optimistically believes, from the role of avowed enemy. 

Moreover, Draco realizes with delight as Granger’s efforts to hush him evolve from verbal to tactile, there’s room to rise in the limbo land of in-between.

One reason why he can’t shut up is because her reminders for him to keep quiet progress from admonishing touches on his sleeved forearm to gingerly skating over his knuckles. And when the ill-humored spectator behind them finally shouts, “Will. You. Be. Quiet,” Granger halts her explanation of the projector mid-sentence, laughs softly, and places the pad of her index finger on his lips, sliding away as if she’d sealed them.

Her hands are literally dirty, is what he should think, after delving into a box of popcorn.

Instead, he flicks the tip of his tongue to taste the remnant of butter she left behind.

He should feel disgusted, should get up and leave before her hands can taint him any further. This is not how the scion of one of the most revered branches of the Sacred Twenty-Eight ought to behave, his spine gradually relinquishing stiffness and relaxing into his seat’s red cushioned back while the screen’s magnified flash of images and surrounding sound system sap away his initially acute awareness of being around so many damn Muggles.

Countering those intermittent urges to flee is the theatre’s intimate, enveloping darkness. They’re in a Muggle cinema. No pesky mutual acquaintances will judge them here. And perhaps that same strain of thought emboldens Granger as well because surely she would not touch him, repeatedly and deliberately, if she did not want to. She’s so at ease with all her little touches too. Wildly, his thoughts swing to speculating who else she may have brought to the cozy dark corner of a theatre to play with, Potter or Weasley or a Muggle boy or Krum whose arm she had been hanging onto mere months ago? Who else has sat next to her, more keenly aware of the hem of her skirt and the slope of her knee than of the characters’ names?

The screen demands his attention though when the movie’s romance progresses to the point where the two main characters are...disrobing, albeit with more grace than in the encounters he’s had. 

“And people think I’m a profligate,” he mutters. “Granger, are we watching porn?”

“Breasts and some minor rocking do not make this porn,” she replies primly, not tearing her eyes from what is honestly hard to look away from.

“O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again,” beseeches a thespian on screen. Pretty words incongruous to how that same character seizes another kiss that extends for a period beyond comfortable watching. 

Getting up, Draco reconsiders with fingers digging into the seat cushion, and leaving no longer seems feasible. If anything, he should probably avoid getting up at all for a solid ten minutes. 

* * *

Visual and auditory stimulation can be conducive to initiating intimacy.

Or so Hermione had read in an issue of Cosmo UK, while obscuring that front cover with an edition of _ The Economist_. Her father’s dental practice subscribed to both magazines for stocking the waiting room’s shelves, but Hermione’s consulting of the former publication had been a more recent development. Featured headers and captions echo in her memory:_16 Signs He Likes You _ and _ Men’s Body Language, Decoded_.

A good half hour has passed since the film’s more risqué scenes, and as Hermione rises with the rest of the moviegoers to exit, she feels much less tight in her own skin. But the hypothesis lingers. Her contemplation had flickered down to Draco’s clenching, un-clenching hands during the movie, and the idea had occurred to her. Just something to test out. An experiment. 

That stuff in magazines isn’t all true of course, Viktor had elucidated for her. That had been a nice perk of seeing an older boy. Benefitting from his greater experience. Some of the rags were accurate, some total baloney. Most of that territory though, simply depended on the idiosyncrasies of the individual bloke so really, she would just have to find out for herself, wouldn’t she?

“I’ll catch you guys at rehearsal tomorrow,” she tells the rest of the group as they look at her questioningly outside of the theatre. “I’m going to walk my friend home since he’s not from around here.”

“Combating gender norms, I like it!” comments Nicky Moore, and a couple of her other friends wave her farewell with pointed, suggestive smiles. 

“So what’d you think of the film?” Hermione asks as she and Malfoy navigate off to a quieter street.

“A must-see romantic comedy,” he solemnly replies. “Guaranteed to win an Oscar.”

Her eyes instantly narrow. “You read that off a poster, didn’t you?”

“How else could I prepare for a pop quiz by Professor Granger?”

“An honest opinion will suffice, thanks.”

“Fine. The story wasn’t all true, you said? Then it was clever how the director wove in historical figures and literary references. Creative. I liked how it wasn’t a happy ending, but that the memory of her inspired his writing. And I’m finally starting to appreciate the double and triple meanings of your Bard’s lines.”

“Oh really?” Hermione challenges before adopting the exaggerated manner normally reserved for the stage. “Pray, sir, to which lines do you allude?”

Malfoy redirects his flustered grimace towards the darkened window of a bookshop, and Hermione bites back on a laugh. Most of the boys in her theatre group had reacted similarly when it came time to recite the more tawdry verses brimming with innuendo. When Doug Booth had wooed her as Orsino to her Viola, he’d stared straight through her, with a scrunch between his brows, as if he were reading the lines off somewhere conveniently behind her head. 

“Graze. On my lips --” 

Hermione swivels around -- for a guy with longer legs, she notes, Malfoy sure walks slowly next to her -- and Draco’s silver eyes focus on her face. On her lips.

Steel, she commands herself, be as steely as his eyes. 

“And if those hills be dry -- stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie,” he finishes, with a straight face. 

“Oh that’s tame in the realm of Shakespearean innuendo,” she tosses back. “Did you catch the one in_ Twelfth Night _at the park? When Malvolio went: ‘By my life, this is my lady's hand: these be her very C's, her U's, and her T's?’”

Draco blinks and flushes. “Merlin, Granger, your parents really encourage you to perform this stuff?”

“Oh yes, theatre was supposed to be my extracurricular hobby for uni, if I’d gone on to a regular secondary school and applied. My parents thought it would look good on paper, an activity that requires teamwork and public speaking.”

“But you won’t be going to...uni anymore.”

“Unless...what if no office in the Wizarding World will employ me after we graduate?” Her right hand is theatrically clasped to her chest as she ponders this, and she meant it as a joke, but he doesn’t even snicker.

“Anyhow,” she continues. “I didn’t stop participating because this way, I can still spend time with old friends in the theatre club. And I don’t mind all the memorization. Rehearsals really helped train and boost my memory actually.” 

Draco doesn’t nod, but every so often, he glances at her profile as if he’s genuinely listening to her ramble about her Muggle life. Sure, she wants him to let down his guard, but she’s not here to get too comfortable herself, and so she slips in a gibe, just like old times. “If it weren’t for theatre club, my performance at school probably wouldn’t be so much better than yours.”

“Or maybe,” he glowers. “You just get off on being pretentious about how hard it is to tell a dirty joke in front of other people. By the way, your on-stage snogging technique? Sloppy. Why don’t you try to refine that with some more rehearsal?”

She swats at the relatively reachable target of Draco’s shoulder, though not with true venom and more influenced by the friskiness of Crookshanks when pouncing after Ron’s chess pieces. Agilely, with the reactive speed she can only guess derives from years in the air as a Seeker, Malfoy seizes the wrist of her antagonizing hand. She doubts that he intends it, but two of his fingers gentle the capture, sliding against her skin, as slow as a caress.

“The gentleman doth protest too much,” Hermione tells him, chin jutting out because no, she is not pouting; he’s simply pulled her too close now that she has to tilt to look above his jaw. “I’d prefer to just consult Viktor Krum the next time I’m rehearsing my snogging technique as he had no such grievances.”

“Really.” It’s not a question, not the way Draco’s enunciating it, but Hermione shoots back childishly anyway. 

“Yes, really.” Before the prat can utter another word and more importantly, before she loses her nerve, she leans in and up to kiss him. 

Coverage and aim-wise, her mouth comes into contact with his lower lip more than his upper. Could’ve been worse, Hermione will later evaluate considering that her poor angling could’ve landed on his chin; even later, she will bite down on her bottom lip to blanch out the ghostly impression of how the swell of his fit lushly against hers.

Suspending the chaste peck and stepping back, Hermione doesn’t meet Draco’s eyes. So he wants her to refine her acting, does he? Well, let her practice on him then.

“I’m sorry,” she professes, looking anywhere but at him. She’d know soon enough anyway. “You obviously don’t --”

She whirls around to hasten away, but hardly near the pace she’d use if she were truly trying to get away from someone. Just an experiment, she repeats to herself. Regardless of how embarrassed she’d feel if she were wrong and ever laid eyes upon him again, what superior mode of investigation could verify the hypothesis that Draco Malfoy may want to kiss her? And it’s probably wrong that she’s thinking about one male right after kissing another, but Viktor’s tip -- that boys wouldn’t be opposed if she initiated -- bounces through her head as her feet carry her farther away from the boy who seems shocked into still not responding.

So maybe, she’d been wrong. No major matter to lose sleep over. Hypothesis disproved. She’d move on with her life and make sure his never intersected with hers again. 

“Granger. Granger! Wait. Must you speedwalk everywhere.” Malfoy sounds hoarse as he catches up to her.

“Right now, I must. Because you obviously don’t --”

He sinks, his head angling more gracefully than when she’d bobbed forward, and his mouth slants over hers. Just softness meeting softness at first. 

His left hand skates down her right flank, suddenly apprising her of ticklish vulnerabilities there, and when she unseals her lips to giggle, his tongue follows to deepen the kiss.

She should feel disgusted. Making out with Draco of all people in an empty street this late at night. Feeling him and tasting him. God, she has no idea what a boy ought to taste like or how to classify his scent and taste, but she does register that she likes both. 

“Obviously,” he breathes in the few swallows of air she allows him. “Obviously, I do.”

* * *

“You got a bit of -- is that -- ‘Mione, is that a love bite?” Ron’s face is paler than the pillows they’re vigorously trying to fluff up.

“This? No! This is a mosquito bite.” Seizing all the wads of dusty bedding her arms can hold, Hermione moves towards the doorway. “I’m going to take these to the laundry, alright?”

She’s striding down the hallway before Ron can comment further. 

In the vacant laundry room where she deposits the linens and sheets, Hermione plucks a compact makeup case from her pocket to inspect her neck in the mirror. Always conscious of the prohibition against using magic during the summer holidays, she’d mooched the compact from her mum’s bathroom and had been powdering over the redness each morning. This morning however, Molly Weasley had bustled into 12 Grimmauld Place, followed by the summoning of all free and available sources of child labor for sweeping and scrubbing the ancient house. 

Fingers brushing against her neck, her hand comes away sweaty, and she re-dabs powder with a sigh. Trust Malfoy to have gone for the throat. 

Back upstairs, the kitchen door bemoans its sluggish opening, and she ducks around a corner of the entry hall, waiting for some of the adults to trickle out. 

When she peeks back into the kitchen, only Sirius and Mad-Eye remain. After the mistaken identity debacle of fourth year, she can hardly claim to know or trust the real Alastor Moody, but if his commitment to defeating Death Eaters is anywhere close to his historical reputation for that fervor, then his assessment will suffice as a second opinion.

Unfurled on the long table is a scroll, no, a map of English regions, Hermione discerns as she enters with an ahem for her elders. Not so different from the Marauder’s Map, but displaying much more ambition in scope and scale. Some of the miniature name markers are pinpointed at specific conurbations and counties, or towns and cities large enough to merit an indicator on the map. Other names drift at the edge of the scroll for future positioning. Resting her index finger on one particular name, Hermione drags it away from the others.

“I may soon be able to give you some information about his location.”

Moody’s good eye stays on her while his prosthesis swivels towards Sirius. “Miss Granger. I was not aware you socialize in the same circles as Lucius Malfoy.”

Socializing in the same circles. An absurd and imprecise interpretation. One step away from the less generously phrased denunciation of ‘fraternizing with the enemy.’

“I don’t. Socialize with the father at all. But I’ve run into his son a few times now in London.” Hermione doesn’t recall blushing when she’d batted her eyes rather brazenly at the aforementioned son, but she feels her cheeks warm at the thought of explaining any further details to Moody and Sirius, both who are likely doubting her sanity and judgment at this very moment.

“Hermione,” Sirius broaches the landmine of a subject, grimacing. “I thought we discussed this in a brief moment of absolute folly, and we decided to toss it.” His voice rises at the end. Sirius is Harry’s parental figure though, not hers, not when she has a Mum and Dad of her own to shield.

“I’ve reconsidered. I don’t like it when ideas are just vague noise in my head. But now, I have a more concrete proposal.” She places a wafer-sized piece of hardware on the table.

“Proposal, right,” Sirius scoffs, but Moody comes nearer to poke his wand at the widget. 

“Has Mr. Weasley ever discussed phones with either of you? Most Muggle households have a stationary one in their homes, but shops have been debuting new mobile phones, and here, this is one I’ve borrowed for example.” Next to the green and metallic chip, Hermione places Theo’s cell phone.

“This rectangular chip with metal pins is the same type of GPS receiver within these phones,” she explains, pointing at each respectively. “The receiver sends and picks up certain signals to and from cell towers. Say there’s three cell towers that each ping the receiver. The distance from those towers to the receiver could help us determine the approximate triangular area of the receiver’s location.”

“And how do you propose to situate this…receiver on Lucius Malfoy’s person?” Sirius asks, still with open distaste.

“I --” Hermione starts and breaks off with a short laugh because she’s long traversed beyond caring about flouting school rules and societal norms, but viscerally, what feels like her heart recoils even as her head irons out the plan. “This receiver is slim enough to seal into the lining of a cloak or that of robes, or into the heel of a shoe. I -- I’m going to try to secure an invitation -- from his son -- to Malfoy Manor. I guess, the less you know about that, and maybe even the less I plan it out ahead, the better. Getting an invitation to the Manor, getting to the point where the son might invite me over, that has to feel like a natural development. Organic. Something he wants on his own, more than it being at my insistence.”

“Hermione.” Sirius curbs her rambling with a hand on her shoulder. “We understand. The basic premise at least. Just, take some time and think over this again. Before you do anything further. Malfoy -- I mean, Lucius -- according to the society pages of _ The Daily Prophet _ and other sources -- no one, including his family, has seen much of him this summer, which is also one of the reasons why we’re so interested in his whereabouts and his likely contact with Voldemort. But he’s most definitely concealing his movements with magic beyond a fourth year student’s knowledge.”

Irritation flares through Hermione, but she keeps her tone cool and crisp as she replies, “I agree. Beyond a fourth year witch’s or wizard’s knowledge. But Lucius Malfoy is exactly the type of wizard arrogant enough to overlook how anything Muggle-made could affect whatever the Death Eaters are up to.”

The kitchen falls silent as Sirius and Moody trade uncertain looks. 

Surrendering the pitch of a plea, Hermione informs them, “Regardless of whether I have the Order’s formal blessing or not, I’m going to do this. I have to try. To do something for the people I care about.”

For the first time since this conversation’s start, Sirius smiles at her. “Hermione, you’re such an invaluable asset for the Order.”

Her own impulse to smile back fades, but she flashes a brief, awkward twist of a smile as Sirius launches into his recollections of Malfoy Manor’s layout and surrounding safeguards. For all he knows, the Malfoys could have added a new wing or multiple annexes since Sirius’ teenage visits as a less disgraced member of the House of Black, but it’s better than walking in blind.

Of course Sirius would think of the Order’s members first, Hermione reminds herself upon later leaving the kitchen-meeting room. She’s not doing this just for the Order though, despite how dearly she regards Harry and Ron, the Weasleys, and every friend she’s made in the Wizarding World. But Christ, her parents come first. Before she'd ever knowingly met any wizard, she'd lived a life with Muggle friends and neighbors. Nicky who'd grown up across the street from her. Who, last summer, had so confidently but with great care pierced Hermione's ears for her. All the friends in her theatre club with whom she would've attended secondary school had that gorgeous sheaf of Hogwarts-seal-stamped parchment never landed in her letterbox. To the Wizarding World, they were all just nameless, indistinct faces in need of protection. Protection they sorely needed of course, but the more Hermione reflects on Sirius' words, the more she realizes that no wizard, no matter his fondness for Muggle culture, would have those individuals at the forefront of his mind when he hadn't walked his first steps among them._ I want to do this_, she steels herself, _ to protect those people. My Muggle friends and neighbors and complete Muggle strangers. To protect my parents from ever suffering the curses Death Eaters would inflict to harm them. To guard the safety of every Muggle-born schoolmate at Hogwarts.  
_

Steel like Draco’s eyes.

She wonders what he’ll think of her next performance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know a whit about how cell phones work? Nope. But for plot purposes, I'm pretending I do :D


	4. Chapter 4

Seeing...going around with Granger diverges from all -- well, all one and a half -- of Draco’s prior entanglements, but also all he knows about relationships in the milieu of his upbringing. When he had asked Pansy to the Yule Ball last year, she had promptly pressed him with, “So we’re in a relationship, right?” An hour after his “Pansy, let’s see where this goes,” the whole of Slytherin had apparently heard they were officially together. She’d cold-shouldered him for days after Blaise had gifted Daphne with some trinket on Valentine’s, until Draco had presented her a bracelet trimmed with more gemmed charms than Daphne’s from the same jeweler, and then she’d thrust her wrist in her girlfriends’ faces to coo over how serious they were getting. When he’d headed home for Easter holiday, Pansy had invited herself along too, with his mother’s permission, to formally make an impression on his parents.

Two days after having Pansy over for Easter tea, his non-impressed mother had hosted the Yaxleys over for supper, their daughter Lysa tagging along to simper prettily as her father had reminisced on how Purebloods used to be betrothed by fourteen. “Fourteen’s a tad young,” his mother had thankfully recognized after their guests’ departure. “But there’s no harm in cultivating other potential matches should your dalliance with Ms. Parkinson not work out.”

His own parents had danced through mostly chaperoned courtship at sixteen (“When I was your age,” Narcissa had once confided with a fond smile. “I actually found your father intolerable for most of our school years.”). By her engagement a year later, his mother had acquired a dragon’s hoard of a jewelry collection. 

Draco knows that any Pureblood girl would want and expect the same from him.

Two weeks into...doing whatever it is he and Granger are doing, he finds himself empathizing with Pansy. Because this urge to know what he is to someone, what she wants from him, is a maddening, compulsive tumble of uncertainties itching for clarification every time he talks to Granger.

Which isn’t as often as he’d like.

“I’ll be in the city again this Friday,” her slick mouth had informed him after that first snogging session. “Final rehearsal before our play this weekend. I could hang around for a bit after we’re done. If you, uhm, want to show up.”

So he had. And during intermission the day after that, he’d pressed her against a wooden post behind the curtain to reapply his mark on her neck. 

Central London, through unspoken agreement, is a neutral, suitable playground. Granger does not tell him in which borough her family resides, only doling out instead that she’ll be in the city this day or that for her theatre club, or some other social excursion. He’s almost always an afterthought on her tongue, penciled-in for the after-hours of her schedule. 

“Oh yeah, she definitely wants you to chase her,” is Blaise’s read after Draco poses him a hypothetical situation for appraisal. Absolutely hypothetical with an invented foreign name and imagined hairstyle. “What a radical thought, right? That you’ll actually have to put in some work for this bird? Does she know how rich you are?”

“Yes, she keeps trying to shame me for it with some socialist manifesto,” Draco mutters before hurriedly filling in, “But her family’s wealthy in other ways.”

“What, like rich in love?” Blaise snorts. 

“They’ve got...cultural capital. So, back to -- should I ask her first then, about where she wants this to go?”

“Depends on the girl. She might just enjoy the chase, not the getting caught part.”

Alright then, so Granger’s likely trying to play hard to get with him. Admittedly, new territory for him, which he hates.

He especially hates that it’s working.

* * *

They’re at the Tate Gallery because Granger had decided she wanted to see their Pre-Raphaelite collection, and Draco had agreed because he wanted to see her. 

Mocking Granger’s tour guiding skills results in her rudely abandoning him in the modern art wing, to be creeped out by a ghastly triptych of three mangled creatures. Realizing that Granger’s constant narration of Muggle history is the only thing that makes this museum visit not a tedious waste of his time, he roams the maze of white-walled galleries to eventually spot the back of her, her curls dusting the scoop of bare back exposed by her summer dress. A Muggle bloke has sidled up to her and is currently trying to impress her with, “I think this is Hirst’s most mature work. His oeuvre just really captures the circle of life, you know?”

“Mhmm,” Granger murmurs noncommittally. “Sure, like _ The Lion King _.” Sighting Draco, she waves at him, slips an arm around his, and says sweetly, “My boyfriend’s here. See you around!”

She lets go as soon as they’re out of that gallery.

“Boyfriend, am I?” he cajoles her for validation of the status.

“Oh yes, you’re very good at the role of impromptu boyfriend. I tried that with Ron once, and he sputtered like a fish out of water.”

“Speaking of Weasley. Are you going to tell him and Potter about us before we get back to school? Because I’m just imagining if they see us without being forewarned, they might react rather rashly.”

“About us?” She’s steered him into a room of blank white canvases, rendered less sterile by the presence of potted flowers and...live butterflies and pupae nestled along the walls. Hirst again, Draco notes skeptically from a label, even though Mother Nature should get the credit. “What is there to say about us?”

Huh. Pansy had played dumb with him a few times. To get him to fill in the words and reveal his position first. Playing dumb doesn’t suit Granger at all.

“Oh I don’t know. They might be surprised to see us...on talking terms when last semester, we were --”

“Last semester, you hexed me with _ Densaugeo _ in the face --”

“My spell intended for Potter accidentally impacted your face --”

“Anyway, who’s to say there will be anything between us by September to tell them about,” she mutters.

“What. Does that mean?”

She sighs and spins around, as if to speak more to the butterfly she’s coaxing onto her finger. “It’s early August. September’s still a while away. Who knows if we’ll still be doing this by then.”

“And what exactly is this?”

“I don’t know. An association of mutual appreciators of theatre and snogging? Why are you asking all this anyway?”

“I -- forget it.”

She does apparently, shrugging and moving onto the next gallery. 

He doesn’t. “I just wanted to know what you wanted from me, I guess.”

Her back goes rigid, and she doesn’t look at him, casting her guarded expression elsewhere. Fuck. He needs to pull back, not scare her off. He’d assumed that Granger would be the type of girl who wanted to talk about the present. The future. 

She looks breezy and carefree again however as she surprises him, pleasantly, by reaching for his hand, running her thumb against the curve of palm leading to his. 

“I want us to keep having fun, before we have to go back to school and studying all the time.”

“But you like --”

“Not all the time, you dolt.” He lets the affront slide because they’re getting somewhere, maybe. She’s not clamming up again at least, and she’s still stroking his hand with her thumb while the rest of her fingers fit nicely between his. 

“I like learning, sure,” she continues. “Memorizing and studying just what’s put in front of you because it’s likely to be on a test is different.” Fine, he’ll let her teach him the difference next semester. They can study together in the fall. Surely, she’ll let him study with her if she’s so into cramming hundreds of years’ worth of Muggle culture into his cranium right now.

“That’s why I keep asking if you want to see a new movie or exhibit with me. So we can both learn new things. Unless you’re bored here and want to skip to the snogging now?”

“No,” he replies honestly and quickly even though his eyes flicker to her tilted-up mouth. “Hey, stop smirking like that, Granger. Despite what you _think_ you may know of my grades, I’m a fan of learning myself.”

“Oh yeah?” she nudges his left side with her curvier right, still smirking. “Enlighten me as to something you’ve learned today in this museum.”

“Easy. Your parents named you after a fictional adulteress.”

“Falsely accused and groundlessly alleged adulteress,” she corrects, unperturbed.

“I know. I read the whole engraving’s label. I just like the idea of you named after someone so scandalous better.”

“Well how thematically monotonous would life be if all of us were named after stars?”

“I’ll have you know my name is rich with multiple meanings.”

“How fitting,” she remarks, face still tilted up and lips parted. Like she wants him to kiss her. Draco leans in.

And a security guard coughs, provoking Granger into quick-fire apologies. But she doesn’t let go this time.

“Hey,” she says, slightly swinging their still united hands as they make for the museum exit. “I figured out what I wanted from you.”

“You’re still on that? I don’t know, my offer may have lapsed by now.”

“You mean, you’re not interested in snogging somewhere more private?”

He reaches for her other hand, pulling her closer so she has to face him. “Intriguing counteroffer. I’m listening.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are.” Her eyes, warm and bright in the afternoon light, study his reaction. “Considering how much we’ve already offended public sensibilities with our...activities requiring physical contact, I think we should find somewhere with a door to shut.”

“The museum had plenty of doors,” Draco points out, determined to aggravate her into saying more. 

“Somewhere with fewer onlookers then.”

“Like --?” Come on Granger, his eyes compel her to just say it, to invite him to her house. Her room.

“Like, perhaps, we could try your room?”

Oh. Just hearing her suggest it hurtles his heart into simultaneous thrill and trepidation. He can already envision Granger shyly closing the door behind her and approaching his bed. Her curls fanning out on his pillow. Her face still savoring a kiss like the first time he saw her on stage.

But his father is home this week. Continuing their exhibitionist tendencies outside the home, despite the hazard of getting cited for public indecency, is practically the risk-averse option next to the peril of getting caught with a Mudblood by his father under said patriarch’s roof. Dread surges in him. What was he thinking, asking her what she wanted from him? What could he even give, freely and openly? He can hear his father’s recrimination even now, welling up in his ears, hissing at how he dares to bring the likes of her to the Manor. Oh sorry Granger, you’re probably the first Mudblood to come here in a hundred or more years, not sure if the place is enchanted with deadly booby-traps against your kind.

“Forget it. That was presumptuous of me. Inviting myself to your home.” Her words come out composed and apathetic, discordant with how forcefully she jerks her hands out of his grip. 

“No. You weren’t. Presumptuous.”

“You clearly don’t want me at your house.”

“Stop assuming what I do and do not want because what I want is you bending over my bed in just your knickers.”

Her mouth drops open, her widened eyes darting to look at anything but him.

“Granger. At ease.” He tilts her chin back up. He wants her eyes on him. Always wants her eyes on him. “Did not mean to send you into a spiral of virginal panic.” He keeps his tone mostly mellow, but his eyes sharply probe her every twitch because suddenly, keenly, he wants to know if Krum’s gone there with her. Back last year, he would’ve bet his inheritance that Hermione Granger was a virgin, but as she had been demonstrating these past weeks, someone had taught her how to kiss and neck. And...if she did have more practical experience than him in that regard, then fine. He would just have to scour the Manor’s library for some theoretical know-how to make it just as good for her. No, better even. Definitely better than whatever the fucking Bulgarian Bonbon's had with her. 

“When I said -- what I meant when I said --,” she rushes out, eyes earnest and alight again. “I’m not ready to have sex. With anyone right now. Because I haven’t. Ever. And I’m just...not ready.”

“Full stop there. You don’t owe me an essay on the why. I was just joking about you bending over. Less so about the knickers.”

She scowls up at him. Adorably. But then she bounces up to whisper in his ear, “I could wank you off though. While wearing just my knickers.”

Wincing at the lack of robes past his hips, he bends to nuzzle his groan into the crook of her neck. She smells so sweet there. And it never fails to make her shiver. “Maybe save those words for my bedroom.”

He feels her laugh vibrate along her throat muscles. “So that’s a yes to your place?”

“Yes,” he hums into her pulse, stroking her nape. “And you’re not going to be doing all the work on this group project. I want to touch you too.”

“Deal, partner.” She leans back to look him in the eye with a smile. “So when are we meeting for this group project?”

“Soon. I just need to clean my room.” And lay a heaping of parental-repelling charms around his bedroom door. 

* * *

The egg timer screeches, no friend to Hermione’s nerves. One hand still fiddling with the shoe on the kitchen table, she slaps at the timer with her free arm. But Dobby’s palm gets there first. 

“Dobby, how does this look?” Her bun’s falling apart, her nails are peeling from repetitions of_ Reparo _with a foreign wand, but the men’s shoe, size eleven, on which she’s been practicing looks passable to her eye. 

As she hands the shoe over for Dobby’s inspection, the sole and heel wilt like a banana peel away from the rest of the leather. 

Sod Lucius Malfoy for cavorting around in imported, hand-stitched, and side-buckled fancy shoes. Originally, she’d figured that it would be a manageable enough task: sneak from Draco’s room to the Malfoys’ shoe closet while Sirius would set off a distraction, locate the senior bastard’s footwear, slit through the sole, insert the GPS receiver, and reseal with a simple whirl of _ Reparo _. 

But after Dobby, eager to help them with summer at Hogwarts so idle, had sketched the layout of Malfoy Manor for her, she was beginning to wonder if she could even pull off the first part of getting from Draco’s room to the entrance hall wardrobe without appearing suspiciously out-of-place or without getting lost in the sprawling estate. 

Dobby, bless him, had also provided her with more information about the family’s shoe habits and Lucius’ house slippers than she’d ever cared to know until recently. “No riding boots or outdoor shoes in the house, those are Miss Narcissa’s rules to keep mud out,” Dobby had explained while outlining the parameters of the entrance hall. 

At least Lucius’ habit of importing shoes from the same Italian cordwainer simplifies the undertaking somewhat. Assuming she reaches the Extension Charm-modified closet, she can just _ Accio _ by uttering the designer’s name since any new shoes are stored in their boxes elsewhere. Then comes the part Hermione honestly didn’t expect to be so hard. She’d pored over the design and leather suturing of old designer shoes excavated from the wardrobe of Sirius’ forefathers. Nonetheless, under Dobby’s supervision and the egg timer’s ticking, her _ Reparo _still couldn’t quite restore the bloody handcrafted shoes she was slashing into for practice.

“Dobby could do it for you,” the elf tells her, holding up his fingers as if to snap and Apparate to the Manor this very moment. 

“No, Dobby. Thank you. But you shouldn’t take the risk of going anywhere near the Manor.” Hermione smiles tightly at him. “I don’t want anyone there to possibly spot you and try to recapture you into servitude.”

From the kitchen doorway, Sirius clears his throat. “And have you given any thought as to how to protect yourself should someone catch you?”

“If by Draco, I can handle him. If by anyone else…” She drums her fingers on the table, teeth working more nervously at her bottom lip. Pity Professor Lockhart’s Dueling Club had been so short-lived and had taught them absolutely nothing useful.

“You’re not going in there without learning a silent signaling spell then. Come on, wand laid flat is fine. You know _ Periculum_, don’t you? This is just a slight deviation from that.”

Repeating the spell after Sirius with one hand on her borrowed wand, Hermione observes the resulting red flare at the tip of his wand.

“If anything goes wrong,” Sirius tells her, his voice hard and stern. “You signal right away. You are not alone. We will come and get you out of there.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly, attempting a weak smile. “Is this what it felt like to be a Marauder?”

“‘Fraid even we were not so brazen as to break into the Malfoy stronghold.”

“Technically, I’m invited,” Hermione says softly. 

Sirius redirects his gaze to the Manor sketch. She wonders if he would be more direct if she were a boy. If she were Harry. Or even if they were discussing purely strategic plans.

“About Draco,” Sirius says finally. “I could teach you some defensive and combative spells. Just in case.”

“I don’t think I’ll be needing those right now,” Hermione replies, getting up from the table. 

Neither Sirius nor Dobby appear confident in her opinion. 

Her skin tingles with the memory of how often Draco’s hands have been all over her recently. Goosebumps rise just as readily at the thought of those hands aiming -- truly aiming and not just some miscast _ Densaugeo _ \-- a wand at her. She’s no self-deluding Lockhart about her theatrical range. "At your age and with your eyes," her club director had told her, "it’s child’s play to bat lashes at a male, and if he’s half-attracted to you, half of the work is already done for you because he’ll _ want _ to believe the stars in your eyes are for him." So Viola and Juliet had been the roles assigned to her. She’d silently agreed because what did she know of mature manipulation akin to Lady Macbeth’s? Around Draco, most days, she almost doesn’t have to pretend. In her head, it’s just a minor adaptation of the roles she’s already played.

And maybe it’s girlish naivety she’ll rue, but she reaffirms, “No, I won’t need those. I can handle him.”

More hesitantly: “He won’t hurt me.”

As long as he doesn’t find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought that I should give a fair warning that I'm still going to aim for near-weekly updates, but with work gearing up again and me being a slowass writer, updates will prob be slower.


	5. Chapter 5

Draco doesn’t take her through the entrance hall, though Hermione had not expected him to parade her through there, as if to meet his mother anyway. Under different circumstances, she would have snidely remarked on how he’s likely ushering her into the Manor through the servants’ entrance, this path from the back garden to a side door directly leading to one of the Manor’s many turrets.

His room, right beneath the turret’s peaked roof, is much more suffused with light than the black and absinthe green imitation of the Slytherin common room that she’d envisioned. Summer dusk glow, rosy and golden, spills in from tall, diamond-paned windows along three high-ceilinged walls. Open-back bookshelves stand at two corners of the room. Fresh-cut flowers in vases sit atop the wooden bedside table and the longer chest of drawers. His curtains, drawn to the corners, are sage green. Hermione imagines that if he were to pull them closed right now, she would feel quite safe, like a guest at some remote but luxurious forest lodge. 

As she enters, she’s immediately hit with the quandary of where to sit. Perching on one of the leather chairs at either end of the chest of drawers feels too formal, but the only other option is the four-poster bed positioned between two lit sconces.

“I was expecting dungeon decor, but this might be the nicest boys’ room I’ve come across,” she declares, opting to stand and hover safely by the bookshelves. 

“Well, we have a dungeon,” Draco says, leaning against the door and looking much more composed than how she feels. “But I prefer natural light and a view to being below ground myself.”

“Right, of course.” Struggling to maintain her rapidly fleeing nerves, Hermione turns away from him to peruse the book spines on his shelves in half-feigned interest. 

Of late, she’s seen more of Draco than any of her actual friends from school, but looking directly at him now feels precarious. Still, he’s most likely to read her nervousness as merely jitters about being with him in his imposing house and coming here to get off with him. Whenever she’d invited him to a play or film in London, she had time and external stimuli on her side to warm up and loosen up enough to snog him. Here though, she has nothing with which to distract him but herself. For all she’d practiced planting a makeshift tracker on his father, she realizes that she could have rehearsed the seduction part of this tryst a little more. 

“Do you have anything to drink?” She blurts out. “Like something with...alcohol?”

Arms crossed and looking more bemused than ever as if he can’t quite believe she’s freely in his room either, Draco blinks and mutters, “Uh yeah...we can certainly fulfill that need. Let me just -- I’ll be right back.”

“Great. Thanks. Oh, um, probably just something sweeter and not as strong as whatever your father drinks.”

His mouth softens into an amused smirk. “Got it. One order of liquid courage for Granger coming right up.”

After the door shuts behind him, Hermione counts to thirty before trying the knob. Unlocked, it turns smoothly and soundlessly in her hand. Good to know for later. Dropping her bag and sliding it mostly under the bed to keep it out of sight, she goes to the room’s corners to pull the curtains closed. The Malfoys kept a lovely garden indeed, but the last thing she needs is for Lucius to perchance take a stroll outside and look up towards his son’s room.

On the bookshelf farthest from the door, she takes note of the clock -- right on schedule -- before noticing a picture frame laid flat. Turning it over, she instantly recognizes Pansy Parkinson in a black cocktail frock, next to Draco at some dressed-up gathering. Blaise is posing in the photograph too, while Crabbe, Goyle, and Pike are jostling to stay within the frame, but it’s Pansy to whom her eyes return. Pansy around whose waist rests Draco’s arm.

A better agent for the Order would probably rifle through more of Draco’s possessions, but Hermione figures that her intentions here are bad enough without further breaching his privacy so she lays the picture back facedown.

At the edge of the bed, she finally sits to wait, one hand enjoying the satiny surface of the coverlet. 

She scoots further onto the bed, easing into the sink-and-hug of the mattress. 

The night was always going to end up here anyway.

* * *

Normally, Draco would just order a house-elf to bring up a bottle and a couple of glasses, but it’s a snap to barrel into the wine cellar himself rather than risk having his eagle-eyed mother catch sight of any sign of guests. 

Sweeter and not that strong. He scans the cabinetry for something his mother might offer her garden party friends. 

Grabbing a bottle, he keeps his steps light as he skirts around the drawing room. His father’s study. His mother’s parlour. The rooms into which he personally escorted Pansy and Lysa Yaxley.

A corner of his mind niggles that he shouldn’t have left Granger alone in his room. Shouldn’t trust a girl who’d divulged, with no small amount of pride, that she’d blackmailed Rita Skeeter after espying his fourth-year prattle with a certain beetle. 

“You watch me often at school, Granger?” he’d asked, masking his relief that she hadn’t transfigured him into a microscopic-enough pest for a jar-throttling lesson on not messing with Hermione Granger. 

“Hardly,” she’d rejected, chin turned up. “I was watching out for my own reputation.”

His stride hastens, bottle bouncing against his thigh.

But when he opens his door, she’s just perched on his bed, flipping through the book he left on his nightstand. 

“Isn’t this the treatise sixth-years use for Alchemy?” Granger queries, not looking up.

“That’s suggested, supplementary reading for seventh-years actually. I always got good marks in Potions and no --” He holds up the hand not pouring her a drink. “Not because Snape doctored our grades. I don’t care what you Gryffindors think of him. He’s a fucking straight arrow when it comes to that stuff. But ‘cause of Potions, I’ve been thinking that Alchemy would be a logical elective come sixth-year.”

“Don’t you already have enough gold?” Hermione asks, her curious eyes the same hue as the whisky he hands her. 

“That’s just one strand of alchemy,” he counters, watching over the rim of his own crystal tumbler for whether she likes the taste.

“I know that.”

“Yes, yes, Granger, you know everything. But --” He reaches down to flip to another section of the text. “While I don’t aspire to become the next Nicolas Flamel, I read anything I can get my hands on relating to potential panaceas for blood curses.”

“Panaceas,” Granger repeats dubiously. “Not to get all my parents-are-medical-professionals on you, but considering how complex the human genome is, how thousands of hereditary diseases stem from single-gene mutations, that sounds...impossible.”

“Yeah, maybe for Muggle healers,” he rebuts. 

“Doctors. And scientists and researchers would agree with my position.”

“_Muggle _ scientists and researchers whose farthest stretches of imagination couldn’t conceive of what alchemists have accomplished.”

Her lips part in a snarl, ready to argue, but then she asks more earnestly, “What got you interested in all this anyway?”

“A classmate of ours. You know Daphne? Our year, my House. She and her sister...the Greengrass family has a blood curse, and Daphne’s a latent carrier, but healers ran these tests and confirmed that the condition has manifested in her sister. These kinds of blood maledictions, they’re not that uncommon among Pureblood families actually. So...maybe one day, all this reading could be useful. Towards developing a way to cure people like her.”

Granger quietly traces the squares on a table of alchemical symbols. “Never thought you had such...noble ambitions.”

“Well obviously, I could patent, license, and monetize any elixir I create.”

“I take it back, Mr. Greed-is-king.” She snaps the book shut, both hands lifting it to whack playfully at his flank. 

Draco’s hands intercept hers, pressing the book and her down on the bed. The book, he deposits back on the nightstand without another glance. Granger, he prods her further down, to recline fully under his half-crouched form.

“You know, among your Pureblood ilk, the simpler solution could just be to stop marrying your first cousins,” she snipes even as she lets him unbutton past the vale of her breasts. 

“Do I look inbred to you?” He murmurs near the base of her throat, placing a kiss there, once, twice, steadying himself on hitches of her breath as he goes down the line of buttons. Opens his mouth to suck lightly there as he parts away enough of her summer dress to feel the rounded cup of her bra.

“You seem more inclined to sullying your sheets,” she breathes into his ear.

Pausing, he boosts himself back up to frown directly at her. It’s not like he hasn’t thought about this in the same terms before, but she usually makes him forget all that. When they’re doing this.

But then, her arms fling around his neck, seizing him into a kiss. Deeply. Insistently. Softening into puffs of breath as her mouth clings wetly to his bottom lip. She tastes like cinnamon, from the firewhisky he’s fed her. 

“Keep going,” she urges him, her legs parting beneath him.

A hand sliding slowly up her thigh, collecting her skirt to bunch above her waist. He raises himself slightly up on his right elbow to look. White cotton knickers. His thumb follows the trim of lace under her belly button before pulling lightly at the edge running over her hip bone.

“Can I --?”

Granger shifts her thighs even further open, and Draco’s mouth goes dry at how the cotton conforms to the swell and groove of her. Up and along her center, he trails two fingers. His hand returns to curl four fingers into stroking the crotch of her underwear, his palm covering her mound and gently grinding the heel of his hand against her lower belly. With fixated concentration, he keeps at it, cupping her between the thighs and rubbing out an improvised rhythm. One finger dips further into the cotton, and she writhes, hips lifting impatiently to shimmy her dress and knickers down to her ankles. Then completely off with a flick of her foot. 

She’s pink, and he’s pretty sure he’s pink, but the furl of her clit between the reddened lips of her labia is so truly, delicately pink.

“You’re staring,” Granger states, propping herself up on her elbows to peer down the length of herself. 

He probably shouldn’t tell her that he wants to sustain this moment, wants to hoard the sight of her fucking glistening pink pussy in a Pensieve so he never forgets how Hermione Granger was once wet for him. Strange, he thinks absentmindedly, that older boys like Flint had told him they didn’t even want to graze their mouths down there for a Pureblood girl. Bewildering that he wants to kiss and suck the glisten of a Mudblood’s cunt. But really, she just looks like she’s meant to be stroked and flicked and tongued between the vee of her thighs.

“How -- how do you like it?” he asks, testing with one finger rubbing up and down the slick, slick cleft of her and another doing the same along her labia. His finger slides -- in, pressing in -- further than he intended, but his lower lip trembles at how she’s silken gloss there. Decadent to his suddenly coarse-feeling fingers. She feels so incredibly tender. More delicate than anything he’s ever touched.

“I want to watch you first. Make sure I’m doing this right.”

“Oh I’ll tell you if you’re doing it wrong,” she grits out, pelvis bucking towards his hand. “I don’t know, I don’t exactly do this with myself.”

“Why not?” Fuck, he can’t stop rubbing. Never wants to stop rubbing and trying to commit the incomparable sink-and-cling of her folds to memory. Wants to touch her again and again because he’s sure the memory would pale to the real slippery suppleness anyway. 

“It doesn’t feel like this when I do it myself. Not as...interesting.” Her hand hooks into his waistband. 

“I’m not done with you,” Draco insists, though he lets her roll him off and begin tugging his pants down. 

“Well, I want my turn. To keep this...interactive.”

“We could probably just --” His erection practically aligns with the line of her abdomen, grazing the lower swells of her bra cups as she slides his hardness against her smooth belly. 

“Both of us could --” Draco tries again, words garbling in the gulp of his Adam’s apple as her hand wraps around his cock, fisting up and down once, and then over and over again instinctively.

“Mmm,” she hums agreeably into his neck between kisses. “But let’s do this first since you already know what you like.”

“You can -- go faster. Rougher. I don’t think us blokes are as complicated,” Draco attempts to joke as her clever little fist swivels to meet both of his specifications. To watch her doing it, to know that it's her hand trying to please him -- she's right. Every pass from base to tip feels more elevated under the curl of her fingers, like a million more nerve endings have roused from her touch. She studies her own moving hand like she wants to make sure no inch of him will feel neglected, and it's honestly the most inflaming sight that's ever graced his eyes.

“Like this? Is this good?” A corner of her mouth curls, a mischievous Cheshire grin like a cat that’s already secured its cream. 

“Fucking fantastic, Granger. Fuck.” He pants into the air, and she kisses his pronounced jawline, a maidenly gesture compared to how she pumps him below. Rougher now. Just the way he likes it. “Stop. Stop, I’m gonna --”

“Malfoy, that’s the point.” She’s the one crouching over his supine form now, and when her thumb flicks over the swollen head of him, he just loses whatever thread of control he’s had over himself and spurts. Over his abdomen. On the upper swells of her breasts. 

Well shite. He just came and got cum on Granger’s tits.

But what a white mess to behold. Lazily, he reaches to nudge down one bra cup and wipe a wet smear above her nipple. Certainly not contributing to cleaning her up.

Granger’s nose crinkles cutely, and she plucks his not-helpful hand away, but she nestles closer, tucking her head under his and idly brushing the planes of his midriff. “Good?”

“You need more validation?” He casts a pointed look down her bra. 

“You know me. I crave it.” And she’s already bouncing up and out of his arms, apparently not in the mood to just unwind and cuddle. 

Brow furrowing, he sits up marginally to ask if she has somewhere to be or what the hell she’s rushing for, but she bends fully at the waist to retrieve her knickers and delivers him such an unrivaled view of her cheeks that his cock twitches, an itch again along his thigh. 

Pulling a bit of the curtain aside, Granger peeks outside, and he sees a sliver of deep indigo night sky before she lets the drapes fall closed again. 

“I better get going before my parents worry,” Granger tells him, face tilted down as she steps into the puddle of her dress and pulls it back up. 

“Right, um --” He says dumbly, reaching for his pants even though he just wants to sprawl there for another ten minutes. Would prefer to do that with her next to him. Her Saturday plays, he wants to points out, usually have her coming home even later. 

A sound, like shattering glass, followed by the Manor’s screeching security enchantment cuts through the lull of their getting dressed. 

“Is that a siren?”

“Yeah, someone’s trying to breach the security system beyond the hedges. Or some bigger-than-usual bird’s hit the perimeter ward and set off the alarm.” Draco yanks the curtains back open. In the inky distance, he sees the blinking signal beacon. “Stay here. I’m going to go check it out.”

“You sure you don’t want me to come with?”

“My parents not finding out that you’re here remains priority number one.” He flashes her a strained smile. “I’ll be back to sneak you out.”

“Aren’t you a real sweet talker?” Her pursed lips smoothe to offer a grudging, “Just, be careful. Can’t exactly come rescue you if I can’t leave this room.”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t mother me like you do with Potter. I think I can handle myself in my own house.”

* * *

In her head pulsates a ticking like the timer she’d practiced with as she scampers towards the entrance hall, keeping close to the walls and shadows while her bag bounds an offbeat metre against her hip. 

What was the point of having a house as big as a robber-baron’s other than to tire out the laboring hands of house-elves?

She reaches the foyer’s closet in dead silence aside from her own breathing. Everyone else, based on the alarm’s location, should be charging in the opposite direction right now, towards the colonnaded veranda’s back doors. 

_ Accio _ shoots smoothly from Hermione’s borrowed wand, summoning Lucius’ Italian designer shoes to her waiting grasp. A slicing flick, and she fiddles the first GPS receiver into the left sole, muttering a charm to adjust any disparity in weight.

“Batty!” A male voice thunders from somewhere upstairs, but striking Hermione’s ears as not that far-removed. Lucius sounds like he could be storming down the banistered staircase any instant. “Get me the riding boots. Damn rain’s left the garden a mire back there.”

No time to check the quality of her_ Reparo _ on the first pair of shoes, and Hermione doubts how much time she really has to place the backup tracker, but Merlin knows if she’ll ever get a chance like this again. 

She has to try. 

Her hands shake as the first boot, then the second, flies to her clammy grip. 

* * *

“Okay. We’re going to go in there and browse, but you really don’t have to buy a phone today. They’re coming out with new models all the time anyway so we can always come back.”

They’re outside Motorola again, and Draco strides confidently past her to open the glass door. “I concede that this might be an overly generalized observation on your gender so save your accusation of sexism, Granger, but you women could save so much time if you just bought what you needed instead of window-shopping all the time.”

“You don’t _ need _an outrageously expensive phone.”

“Seems like I need it to talk to you since your house doesn’t have a Floo,” Draco rebuts. “It’s not outrageously expensive. It’s like buying a pair of shoes.”

At her sullen pout, he nudges her. “How else am I supposed to refine my sweet talking, hmm? Can’t exactly whisper dirty things to you over Owl Post.”

“Oh god.” She covers her face with her hand before hissing, “Don’t you dare try that if you call me. We have two phones at home, and my dad’s always watching the telly next to the sitting room one.”

“Pity. Why don’t you just let me buy you one of these mobiles?”

“No! That’s -- not necessary. These are just -- really lavish toys. You sure you want one when we’re about to go back to school in a few weeks? I doubt there’s even cellular service up around Hogwarts.”

The door chimes open. Just another customer in her periphery Hermione thinks at first. And then her hackles raise as she recognizes the boy heading straight their way.

“Granger! Draco.” Theo greets each of them with a jovial nod. “I suspected that I was replaced as your token Slytherin friend, Granger, but Draco mentioning he was going to get a better phone than mine finally confirmed it. Though I also suspect that Draco here has reaped some exclusive friend benefits that I didn’t receive.”

Something is about to go horribly, dreadfully wrong. She needs to get Theo out of here. Now. Before he says anything further in front of Draco.

“Theo...can we talk outside?” Hermione presses as Draco simultaneously demands, “Nott, why the fuck are you here?” 

Too agitated to fully meet Draco’s eyes, she doesn’t wait for Theo to agree and essentially propels him towards the door. 

“Just give me five minutes with him, okay? Don’t come out. He’s just talking about a personal disagreement we had,” she conveys over her shoulder. 

She can salvage this. She can. If she just nails down how much Theo’s figured out and what he wants here. 

Hermione drags Theo by his pliant arm out of the store, but as they round the less-congested corner from the shop, he shoves her against a brick wall. Pins her right arm before she can grasp her wand and blocks her in with his taller frame.

“For a Mudblood,” he tells her, his voice and narrowed eyes serious. “You really are a brainy little bitch.” 

Theo leans in, ardent conviction in his utterance. Hermione feels like a pin-speared specimen under his close-up scrutiny. 

“The Dark Lord’s regime won’t eradicate all of your kind, you know. His Lord isn’t wasteful with any resource. Should you...convert your allegiances, fully and truly, his regime could have a use for you. And not just on your back or knees.”

Hermione gapes at him. Seals her lips back into a closed seam. Trying not to inhale more of the poisonous aura around him. 

“You’re right to be proud of some Muggle inventions. And you’re good at explaining, or figuring out how those creations function. And I think you learned a lot more about how phones work after I started asking you all those questions, didn’t you Hermione?”

“You want to be a little less of an ambiguous prick, Theo? I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”

“Sure. Keep trying to stick to that script. Let me be a little more blunt for you.” His clinch around her right arm tightens. “The new regime could use a Mudblood with some intellect, such as your lovely self, to build upon Muggle technology. To blend it with the full might of Wizarding magic and achieve even greater potential. We could accelerate technological development further. Weaponize further. Use hybrid innovation to achieve our goals.”

She never should have spoken to him outside of Arithmancy. 

“Fuck off, Theo.” She stomps furiously on one of his feet before forcefully kneeing him in the crotch for good measure. 

He lunges back at her, and her wand’s out, the first syllable of a curse out of her lips. Abruptly, another figure charges around the corner, throwing Theo back and away from her.

“What the fuck is going on here.” Draco’s steel eyes flit between their mutually tense postures.

Theo tilts his head, aiming a cocky sneer at her. “My last offer on the table, Granger. He’s not the only one with a father who’ll be high-up under new leadership. Hell, I suppose Draco and I could both make use of you. In different ways.”

“That’s never going to happen, you sick bastard!” She snarls back, and Draco pivots to restrain _ her _from blasting Theo into a wall though she still gets in, “I bet I could hex your father into early retirement too.”

“Oooh, rawrrr,” Theo jeers, slouching against the opposite brick facade. “Fiery. But I guess you like that, mate.”

“We’re not mates.” His inflection and glare glacial, Draco doesn’t move from her side. 

But even she can sense how that’s about to change.

“I know you...literary types enjoy suspending disbelief now and then, but -- wake up, Malfoy. You and Granger were enemies all through fourth year, weren’t you? She fucking despised you. Plainly said so to anyone who dropped your name. Don’t you think it’s funny she suddenly became all interested in you after our first little visit to this shop?”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I haven't written smut in a while...but here's a practice dosage of smut since they won't be getting their hands on each other for a few years after this (๑′°︿°๑)


	6. Chapter 6

Anger’s no stranger to Draco. He’s simmered with it at least a dozen times in relation to the girl currently refusing to look at him. At Hogwarts, he’d cursed her presence aloud and under his breath and in his head whenever she’d thrown up her hand to deliver a more precise answer in class. Every time she eclipsed him in end-of-the-term marks. Hated being reminded of her existence during any school holiday when his father would inevitably bring up with dripping disdain that despite hired tutors and family connections to certain faculty members and generations of cultivated pedigree, Draco had no area of scholastic superiority to a Mudblood who hadn’t even heard of the Wizarding world before the age of eleven. 

At least, back then, he thought that was hate. 

Now, he realizes that wasn’t true hate at all. That all those prior bouts of indignation pale to the cold, hard rage piercing through him right now. Perhaps, he’d hated her at those finite moments. Temporarily. But this rage and resentment feels boundless and endless and eternal. Like he could hate her forever without ever exhausting himself of it. 

Theo, the smug fuck, is still yapping about how his old man has the dirt on the revival of the Order of the Phoenix. No doubt recruiting among Potter’s friends.

“Theo,” Draco interjects, curt but polite because ultimately, Theo may not be his friend, but Theo and him are cut from the same cloth, and the third person in this alleyway is not -- will never be -- one of them. As far as the Mudblood is concerned, Theo’s done him a favor in reminding Draco of her intrinsic baseness. 

And now it remains to Draco himself to wash his hands of her. “Thank you. For the information. Hope you don’t mind if I deal with Granger myself now.”

A jaunty departing wave that goes unacknowledged by either Draco or Granger, and then it’s just the two of them in taut stillness.

She doesn’t quite meet his eyes. She doesn’t look ashamed either. Simply defiant and self-righteous. Typical, fucking Hermione Granger. 

A part of him, that sentimental weakness which his father insisted derived from his mother’s side, had initially listened to Theo in disbelief. As Granger’s angry, fearful agitation had morphed into desperation -- perhaps even despair, he’d bizarrely thought of Shakespeare’s Hermione, whose insistence of innocence could not move her jealous husband’s heart until it was too late. Accused. Disbelieved. Forsaken. Granger deserved a chance to exonerate herself, Draco had thought even as she’d paled at Theo’s words. He could give her a chance at least. Hear her out before judging. 

But when Theo had paused in his allegations, Draco had looked at her, and that quivering mouth, so usually prepared to spout off about anything, had claimed nothing different. And he’d known instantly that everything about her was false. That she’d sold him some scripted version of herself, and he’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

“How far were you prepared to go for this act?” Draco finally asks, and she looks up warily at how calm he sounds.

She expects him to be angry. She expects him to care. Well, he won’t give her the fucking satisfaction of being right about this anymore.

“If I’d pressed you a little harder, would you have fucked me for something to give to your Order?” Draco does not raise his voice in asking her this. Does not deem her, out loud at least, a filthy Mudblood or a conniving bitch. He might not know her like someone she truly cares for, but he knows that she’s the type to meet fire with fire, that she’s always come back stronger after his name-calling. Infantile insults would only fortify her in her sanctimonious beliefs. 

Whose disapproval and disappointment has left a lasting impression on him? His father’s. Snape’s. It’s their image that Draco echoes as he draws himself to his full height and modulates his voice to a dispassionate, condescending softness. 

It works. In silence, he studies her like a bug under a microscope, and without fuel for her fire, Granger resorts to waterworks instead as her lower lashes rim with tears. 

“No one told me to do any of this. I planned it myself.”

Better or worse that no one had asked or made her do it? That she’d wanted to screw him over all on her own? Worse, he decides, infinitely worse. “Good for you. I guess they call that showing initiative.” 

He takes a step toward her. Lifts and extends a hand.

Granger flinches, even though he only aimed to catch a droplet, to taunt her crocodile tears. Lowering his hand, Draco smiles mockingly at her. Of course, she’s always thought the worst of him.

“You needn’t fear, Granger. I won’t ever be laying a hand on you again.”

How could he ever want to, again? Knowing that she’d only tolerated him so that she could use him. All the while likely feeling the repulsion that should’ve been his. Whose brand of desperation was more pathetic, hers or his own?

“Draco…”

He can’t listen to the rest of this, can’t give her another window into spinning fictions around him.

Turning sharply on his heel, he leaves her there and heads for the Portkey to take him home. The Muggle world, he knows for certain now, holds nothing worth his time. Nothing but hollow distractions.

* * *

An adaptation of _ Orpheus and Eurydice _ is their club’s last summer play.

Not that it really matters for Hermione since she’s thankfully without a speaking part this week. Crowned with a garland of dried apple blossoms and English ivy on her loose coils of hair, she has little to do as Persephone. Staring, blankly and dully, past Orpheus and into the audience, her vision pauses a hitch longer on every blonde head in the amphitheatre. Checking for a real hallucination this time. 

At least, Harry’s Ministry hearing went well this morning. Which means he’s all cleared to stay with Sirius for the rest of the summer at Grimmauld Place. He’d felt -- still felt, really -- left out, Harry had confessed after the Order’s Advance Guard had smuggled him out of his aunt’s and uncle’s home. “I missed the novel-length letters,” he’d told her before accusation tinted his tone. “Whenever you did write this summer, it was a couple of vague lines. Not even, sometimes.”

“Dumbledore’s orders,” she’d responded, truthfully, to his always-direct green gaze. “Ron and I couldn’t say anything specific. About the Order. About how they think You-Know Who is re-mobilizing his Death Eaters. In case anyone intercepted our letters. But you’re here now, and you’ll know everything we know.”

But concerning Malfoy, she’d said nothing. After all, it was like what she’d told Malfoy himself, what was there to say about them? In whitewashed terms -- oh, by the way Harry, I had a fling with our common enemy, but don’t worry, it didn’t even last to September. More bluntly stated -- tried out the spy lifestyle this summer, crashed and burned horribly on my first operation. 

“Hermione, bow!” hisses Doug Booth, squeezing her hand as they line up for their final curtain call. 

Matching her own mood, the scene backstage feels bittersweet, her childhood friends in the club admonishing her to try a little harder this year to keep in touch. 

“Enjoy yourself up in Scotland with that Malloy fellow,” Nicky teases while hugging her. “He was totally lush. A bit standoffish, but if they have more of those at your school, I wouldn’t mind another round of introductions.”

Laughing weakly, Hermione doesn’t correct any of Nicky’s misinterpretations.

Nor is Nicky the only one who brings him up.

“Oh Hermione, I didn’t see Draco here tonight,” her mum points out as they exchange farewells with the other participating families. “Is he…”

“He had no reason to be here tonight,” Hermione mutters.

Her parents trade bemused looks. Hermione would clarify further that really, nothing had transpired between her and that one, and he wouldn’t be popping up in her life anymore so they should never expect to see him again...but a hoot catches her ears. 

From casual observations in the Great Hall and occasional encounters at the Hogwarts Owlery, she recognizes the eagle owl balanced on a tree limb at the periphery where park foliage encircles the amphitheatre. Brown-black plumage and what appears to be a truly impressive set of strong eyebrow tufts. At the Owlery, where its owner wouldn’t witness her attempt, she’d tried to pet it once, and it had delivered the snootiest look she’d ever received from an owl. Fitting, considering its owner.

Its riveting orange eyes glare straight at her now, and she slips away from the parents to cautiously approach it. Its clawed foot hops out, and she leans in to unsnag the small pouch from its talons before it nearly flies into her face in its haste to get away.

She feels the wafer-shaped dimensions of the tracking device before she sees it out of the pouch. It’s crushed. Plastic and metal-pinned face fragmented like a split cracker. Numbly, she uncurls the accompanying bit of parchment. 

_ I was serious about never touching you again. But if you ever again meddle with my family, I don’t have to lay a finger on you to hurt yours. _

In the car later as they’re about to head home, she badgers her father to make a stop in the Islington neighborhood, two blocks away from Grimmauld Place.

It’s Kreacher that crankily opens the door with a cursed greeting of, “The Mudblood, disturbing my mistress in her portrait’s rest at this hour,” though Sirius and Harry have already bounded down most of the stairs when she stalks straight to the kitchen. 

“Hermione! Are you alright?” Harry demands from a banister above. “Is something wrong?”

“I just need to check something.” The boots, the riding boots -- her mind races with her feet. Past the kitchen’s heavy wooden door, she moves to the long table’s map, her eyes scanning in the southwest direction for Wiltshire.

At first, the miniature flag reading “Lucius Malfoy” looks simply static, but then she realizes the marker pulses slightly as it hovers around the Manor. One tracker still activated.

It was worth it then. One hand smothering her shuddering exhale of relief, she can only hope that her eyes aren’t too noticeably rimmed with redness as she wheels around to face Harry.

“Hey. Hey, look at me.” His hands clasp her by the shoulders. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just -- something stupid. But it’s nothing really.” 

From how his eyes search hers, she knows he doesn’t believe her. But he’s never been one to push too much when she’s dissolving into tears. 

Hugging him now feels solid. Easy and real.

It was worth it. 

Over Harry’s shoulders, she meets Sirius’ knowing gaze, and just facing another person who knows -- finally, she allows herself to cry.

_ Oh god, I hope it was worth it. _

* * *

**_ November 1995, Fifth Year  
_ _ Highlands, Scotland _**

Some days, when he walks straight past her without even an insult, their summer intersections feel like they never happened. 

When she’s with Harry and Ron, Malfoy makes sure to taunt the former’s lack of prefect status and the latter’s Quaffle-fumbling on the Quidditch pitch. But when it’s just her alone, he moves past her as though she were invisible, his grey eyes never dropping as if he couldn’t be bothered to look at anyone below his height. Once, during the first week back, she’d spotted him at the other end of a corridor, and he’d simply pivoted to take another route.

But now, he seems to have decided that even doing that would be a show of weakness. 

It would be no sweat to file away and bury the whole shameful affair along with other memories she never wants to revisit, like that frightful incident when she’d accidentally Polyjuiced herself into a whiskered hybrid form of Millicent Bulstrode’s cat. 

If only Theo could stop reminding her that it had all actually happened.

He plunks his books down next to hers in Arithmancy and snags the fourth cauldron when she, Harry, and Ron are trying to form a group for Potions. 

“Weasley, did you know Granger does theatre in her spare time?” Theo cheerfully asks while chopping Alihotsy leaves for their table’s Invigorating Draught. 

“Uhhh no...do you, ‘Mione?”

Abstaining from comment, she tries to focus on comparing the orange shade of the brew with the colour in the book, stirring as she notes the discrepancy. Two tables away, at the corner of her vision, Malfoy is probably doing the same and presumably achieving the proper orange colour because Snape walks by with a “Sufficient enough for an ‘E’ if this were on the O.W.L.s. Just leave it alone now.” Easier to reach ‘sufficient,’ Hermione supposes, when one is not trying to catch Theo’s words and also detect any twitch of reaction on someone at a whole other table. 

“Wow, I thought you, Potter, and Granger are supposed to be the best of pals, the tightest of bosom buddies.” Theo’s smile stretches wide. “I guess knowing about her extracurriculars outside of school is reserved for an even more intimate level of association.”

With a flick of her wrist, the stirring rod lands scalding drops of their Draught onto Theo’s sleeve. 

“Nott, care to contribute something to the group other than worthless gossip?” Hermione snaps. 

He obliges in keeping quiet for the rest of class, but as everyone finishes packing up their Potion kits at the end of the hour, he asks pseudo-innocently for a word with her.

“No more need for my books, Hermione?” Theo inquires in an empty hallway after she firmly tells Harry and Ron to go on ahead. 

“I won’t be needing anything from you, ever again.” Any hint of fearing this boy would only shift the board even more to his advantage so she aims for what she hopes comes off as cool, self-assured indifference. Approximating the same untouchable aura around Malfoy the last time he deigned to speak to her. 

“I beg to differ,” Theo disagrees. His head cocks to the side as he leans in to touch the knot of her tie. As though he were going to adjust it for her. Or more likely draw it tight like a noose. “I think you _ need _my silence and cooperation. And I would like your cooperation. Collaboration, even, on some pet projects of mine. Unless...you want those who put you on such a high pedestal to find out that you’ll get chummy with any Slytherin offering a morsel of usefulness.”

Her arms come up to shove him back like she had during their alley confrontation. Tries to at least, but he learns quickly, this one, and both of his hands jostle back, clutching her wrists against the walls. His lower half halts her kick by bearing so closely against her pelvis that she doesn’t dare move lest she have to feel another inch of him. 

“There are rules against harassment,” Hermione seethes at him, eyes blazing. “I could scream right now, and you’d have to let go unless you want an additional witness. And what’s to stop me then from marching up to Dumbledore’s office and reporting you?”

“Nothing. But even if they initiated expulsion proceedings, I’d find a way to make sure everyone in this castle heard Hermione Granger spread her legs for a chance to get close to Draco Malfoy’s father. Now that’s an unforgettable drama even by Rita Skeeter’s standards. You could forget being known as the brightest little witch of her age. There’d be only one thing people would care to remember about you after that.”

“Good luck with that because the only other person who could corroborate your narrative would very much deny anything ever happened,” she counters. “Maybe I don’t even need to get the administration involved. Maybe I’ll just hex you into the Hospital Wing myself so that the next time you wake up, it’s after we’ve all graduated.”

Theo merely looks more amused than intimidated. “You try that, Hermione. I’d love to see what you’ve actually gleaned from Defense Against the Dark Arts considering our consecutive disappointments of professors. But I should warn you, my father’s given me _ practical _training in that regard. Can’t wait to see how that matches up against whatever skills _your_ father’s given you.”

Even within Theo’s clutches, the skin of her hands flares hot, and Theo releases one wrist with a surprised spasm of pain to examine his own palm. She hasn’t felt this out of control of her magic since she was ten and without a wand, scaring her parents and herself whenever she’d gotten fired up over childish displeasures. Sensing her own loss of control doesn’t stop her from wanting to hurt Theo though. To lash hard enough before he ever thinks to threaten her again.

Down the hall, a clattering sound splits through the air. Her eyes find the source of the noise -- a dropped badge -- just as it begins belting out, “Weasley is our king!”

Hermione wrenches her other hand free. “Leave me alone, Theo. I mean it.”

Warily, she doesn’t trust her back to him until she’s almost at the corridor’s other end. 

No sign of whoever dropped the badge in sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapters until work allows me more of a life, sorry!


	7. Chapter 7

“Hermione.” Lavender nudges her with a sly smile over their Butterbeers. “Don’t look right now. Wait, like thirty seconds. But Theo Nott’s been staring at you for what is definitely too long now to qualify as just a friendly glance.”

Hermione doesn’t look -- tries to continue ignoring Lavender’s presence for the most part, but Ron had insisted on the girl joining their Three Broomsticks trip -- though Parvati does take a gander, because where Lavender goes, there’s Parvati. Hermione can practically imagine Parvati painting her nails in the background of wherever Ron and Lavender inevitably start snogging. 

“Oooh Lav, you’re right. I mean, it’s borderline creepy. But he’s definitely interested. He’s sitting by himself too. Hermione, no pressure, but you should...say hi or something. Or, we could ask him to sit with us?”

“Yeah, we could help set you up with him,” Lavender agrees, but her eyes are fixed on Ron.

“Oh that’s strange,” Parvati remarks with a more puzzled look. More obvious rubbernecking. “Malfoy’s sitting by himself too. In the corner by the other fireplace.”

This time, Hermione does wait, grudgingly counting down thirty seconds in her head before twisting her neck to peep in that direction. Just in time to see his black-suited self -- the cut of the jacket trim and formal, a standout among nearly everyone else wearing jumpers in the pub -- and perceive Pansy sliding into the cozy booth seat next to him. 

Hastily, Hermione looks away, watching the foam bubbles in her glass dissipate into nothingness. It’s easier, she’d read and heard, for guys to move on to someone else, right after. And Pansy probably seems like familiar warmth to him. Pureblood and with the good taste to not drag a Malfoy into Muggle movie theatres. Genuinely adoring. Loyal and by his side for nearly five years now.

Parvati’s fully engaged in chatting earnestly with Dean now, and Harry, chin propped up on one hand, is gazing moon-eyed at -- Hermione follows the trail of his admiration -- oh, of course, Cho Chang, though Michael Corner is setting down two tankards at Cho’s table. 

Inside the crowded pub, the air now feels stifling. Whatever the weather is like outside, Hermione can’t decipher from the fogged-up windows, but it has to be more briskly invigorating than fighting the impulse to swivel her head again. Probably only to see him look softly at Pansy.

“Going outside for a bit,” she announces, springing up and pulling her coat off the back of her chair.

“Yeah, I’m ready to go too,” Harry adds with a tight smile. “I’ll head out with you.”

“Oh Harry, it’s fine. Look, Ginny and Luna just came in. I’m just going to grab a few new quills at Scrivenshaft’s, and I’ll be right back. Just -- need some fresh air.”

She focuses straight ahead as she moves towards the pub door. Instantly, as she steps out, she sort of regrets doing so because the frigid wind slaps her exposed cheeks. Wrapping another coil of her scarf around her lower face, Hermione trudges, gingerly avoiding the patches of ice on the ground, past the picturesque thatched-roof shops, already decorated for Christmas. Nicky would love a postcard of this place, would probably pin it to her bedroom photo wall. Hermione kept her pictures and postcards mostly contained within the boundaries of one board, but Nicky’s assemblage spilled into an ever-expanding mosaic, onto strung clotheslines interspersed with fairy lights.

Instead of stopping at Scrivenshaft’s, Hermione keeps walking to where the weekend crowd thins. 

It’s not until she reaches the edge of the village that she considers rounding back. She has no need for more quills cluttering her bag, but a visit to Tomes and Scrolls never fails to produce voluminous reading to consume the rest of her weekend.

She’s making her way down the curve of a more narrow side street, less illuminated with candled store windows, when a Full Body-Bind hits her in the back. Nonverbal, but also less effective in its silent casting. Her legs hobble together as if suddenly adhered along her thighs, and she nearly falls face-down on the sleeted stones, but her still-mobile arms arrest her keeling over at the last second. Teeth grinding from the pain shooting up her arms and the unresponsive paralysis in her legs, Hermione forces herself to push up and flip over, but as she does, Theo’s wand is already pointed very close to and almost skimming her face. 

Reinforcing that it was a mistake last month to not buy the same brand of wand holster she’d seen on Aurors around Grimmauld Place, her wand rolls away from her. Out of her immediate radius. 

“You move your hands an inch closer to your wand,” Theo warns. “And the next curse won’t be so temporary.” She’s never heard him sound so serious about anything before. 

“I guess this means we’ve moved past the blackmail stage of our relationship,” Hermione huffs back at him. Per his instruction, she doesn’t lift her hands, but the undersides feel raw and wet. From blood rather than melted flurries. “You really know how to charm a girl, Theo. Next time, just skip the phony oh-I-could-be-your-Slytherin-friend act.”

“Why? Because I don’t fit the role as well as Draco?” He crouches down in front of her, resting on his haunches. His breath curls white vapor against her turned cheek. “You know, a lot of what I surmised of your little seduction ploy was just conjecture, before your face confirmed my theories. For someone who’s been in plays since she was a wee girl, you really are shite when you’re off-script.”

His gloved finger tugs a dip in her scarf further down. “You remember what you told me about the scientific method last semester? Reading people is like that sometimes. Closely observe, formulate your hypotheses, and then refine them through empirical evidence and experimentation.”

His other hand fishes his cellular phone out of his trouser pockets. Waves it mockingly before her nose and then lays it on one knee. “I have to commend the Muggles that devised this little appliance. Just so much potential to do so many things in the palm of my hand. But I wonder if your kind realizes the dangers you’ve welcomed into your lives along with the conveniences. You ever read _1984_, Hermione? Heard it’s quite a seminal work among Muggles.”

“Yes. I have. My family had a copy that I read when I was twelve.” Her eyes search the dim street curve behind him. Her ears strain for any hint of steps. 

“Ah yes, Hermione the bookish wunderkind. Well, that’s what I think will descend upon your Muggle society, that kind of surveillance, as you settle into the habit of depending on these devices. I already took mine apart. Just to figure out how to put it back together. Showed Draco the innards too, not that he really cared. All he needed was one glimpse of the soldered hardware. Then, I overheard his mum tell my dad that he went mad for a few days, shredding through the Manor’s closets with some tailored metal detection charm.”

Theo tilts his head, looking thoughtful and serious before brightening. “I think I’ve pretty much figured out phones to my brain’s content now. So, if you don’t exactly want to answer any of my other questions about Muggle technology these next couple of months, you could help with another project of mine. You know about Time Turners, don’t you?”

Hermione twists her mouth into a brief, sweet smile. “All I know is that you’re out of time here.”

His eyes widen, and he scrambles around, only for Draco’s _ Stupefy _ to slam him against a stone post. His head rolls down, chin slipping to meet collarbone as his eyes flicker closed. 

“Thanks,” Hermione mumbles as Malfoy walks, stiff and straight like an automaton, past her and towards the slumped form of his fellow Slytherin. “Nice umm -- nice Silencing spell on your shoes.”

“Yeah I bet you have a lot of opinions on men's shoes now,” he mutters, hauling Theo up by the collar to more directly jam the tip of his wand against Theo’s temple. 

“What -- what are you doing?”

“I’m Obliviating him,” Draco says, all business and matter-of-fact as if he does this daily. 

Hermione gapes at him. “Do you even know how to do that properly? What if you damage other parts of his memory? Or his brain? You’re not exactly a --”

“Yes. I recall. I’m not a powerless Muggle _ doctor_.”

From Theo’s hairline dribbles a dark and slow trickle. 

“Please stop. We can just report him to the professors. If -- if we both tell the same story, I’m sure he’ll stop bothering --”

“You?” Draco finally looks her in the eye, his eyes colder than how the air nips her skin. Harder than how the ground feels against her bum and her still-paralyzed legs. At school, he usually reminds her of a cross between an alabaster bust and London’s corporate financiers, his features having grown more sculpted like an artist’s marble mold. He used to leave his hair alone. Had even let her ruffle it once or twice in a heated moment. The way he parts and slicks it now, in addition to his all-black tailoring only enhance her sense of how long ago that was. That boy feels like someone else entirely as Draco faces her now, his lips pulling back into a sneer, carving the lines of his jowls as he turns vicious in demeanor. Hateful.

“You think I’m doing this for you? Oh no, Granger, you don’t get credit for this.” The tip of his wand grows its white glow, illuminating the contours of Theo’s unconscious face. “I’m wiping his memories to protect myself. So he doesn’t try to come back and use them against me one day.”

He returns his full attention to his task, eyes intent and focused. Is there enough time to stop him from inflicting any permanent damage if she crawls to her wand?

“Don’t over-exert yourself, Granger.” His Body-Bind turns out to be an adequately full-body one as her arms snap to her sides, her hips awkwardly squirming to not roll about helplessly.

He’s polished his wandless magic. She wonders whom he practices on, considering how Umbridge has them doing no more than rote copying of theory.

“I think you should be a good girl and wait out the spell.” Draco stands over her now, but not close enough for her to kick. His visage as smooth and unaffected as a statute’s again. “Probably a hard concept for you to wrap your head around, but some things just have to develop and be earned...organically. Besides, weren’t you the one always insistent that our classmates never see us together?”

His hand plucks her scarf up a little higher where Theo had pulled it down. 

"Wouldn’t do for you to catch the sniffles, would it?" Hermione's not sure if he meant to run his thumb across her lip; his hands are usually so precise, but it could just be an inadvertent consequence of the fit of his gloves. "See you around, stranger."

"Stranger?" she echoes with a laugh.

"Aren't we?" 

* * *

** _December 1996, Sixth Year_ ** ** _  
_ ** ** _Highlands, Scotland_ **

If she thought him changed and different during fifth year, then it becomes evident that he’s even more immutably altered now.

From behind gauzy drapery ringing the circumference of Slughorn’s office, she’d watched as Filch had hauled Draco in front of the Professor for a reprimand of alleged gate crashing. Alleged. Maybe last year, Hermione would’ve believed that Malfoy still cared about padding his status with invites to parties like this Slug Club Christmas fete, but she’s observed him, increasingly ashen and wearied, these past months. He can’t possibly be that tired from schoolwork; she’d been present for McGonnall’s tongue-lashing of his lack of a submission for a Transfiguration assignment. His second missed one this term. He wasn’t even playing Quiddith this semester. Malfoy, who she once had thought would actually get along great with Harry and Ron if they all had beers and chatted about Quidditch without wands around, had simply given up on everything that wasn’t whatever was preoccupying his every waking moment.

Which, according to Harry, was some undoubtedly nefarious scheme.

Her heels clack loudly as she dashes into the hallway toward which Malfoy made his exit, having declined to accept Slughorn’s pity permission to stay at the party.

“Ten points from Gryffindor for running in the corridors, Miss Granger!” Snape barks at her as she ignores him and keeps up her pace past him.

Where did he go? Where might he go at this hour? The common room to lick his wounds? Or somewhere more private?

He’s still a prefect, despite his backsliding academic performance, and the fifth floor bathroom feels as logical a place as any to search.

The stone door admits her into the room of basins and faucets that leads to the boys’ and girls’ respective sides, and there he is, hunched over a sink. Thankfully alone, considering how she once had to backtrack straight out again after finding him with his low-placed hand guiding some giggling blonde girl to the boys’ baths. Daphne Greengrass, she’d learned later -- or more accurately -- overheard from Parvati and Lavender. Back then, she’d viciously speculated whether Malfoy preferred the looks of a girl who practically appeared like his blood relative. And since then, she’d heard that he had started favoring Daphne’s younger sister.

But now...Hermione bites back on verbalizing bitter, aged barbs and approaches his tense back with a more gentle, “Hey. You umm -- are you alright?”

“Fine.” He turns off the tap and faces her, looking at least less agitated than when Filch had dragged him before the rest of the party. “Just chock-full of holiday cheer.”

His steel eyes run up her bare legs, taking in the flare and fit of her pink dress. Instinctively, Hermione crosses her arms over herself -- and somehow that doesn’t help at all, but it’s still as much of a thrill as it was over a year ago when his eyes skim over the rise of her breasts. 

“So,” Malfoy says, his hand coming up to wipe a wet streak across his mouth. He leans nonchalantly against the lip of the sink, flashing her some contorted grin like they’re two friends having a chat. “You having fun with McLaggen? Or is he just some poor fool you’re stringing along until Weasley finally looks at you?”

Despite Theo’s critique, her face still fails to mask how offended she must look because Draco emits a short, harsh laugh. “The latter then.”

“Okay...well how about we switch to discussing your personal life?”

That shuts him up. 

But also closes him off from her as his bogus smile flattens into the expression of a momentarily placid predator. “Oh you know something about _ my _ personal life, do you?”

“I know that you’ve been a mess in school lately. That you of all Quidditch-obsessed blokes gave up on being a Seeker.” Hermione ventures a step closer and how is that when she’s trying her hardest to sound as earnest as she feels, he can still make her feel like the world’s biggest phony with one look? 

“I can tell that you’re not eating or sleeping much. And you haven’t been talking to your friends.”

“Yeah? And which of my so-called friends have _you_ been talking to? Who do I have to _ de_-friend for fucking sharing details of my life with you?”

“No one, I just -- watch you sometimes --”

“Well, stop.”

“I’m trying to say I’m concerned for you!” Thank god it doesn’t come out as loud as it resonates in her head.

“You can stop trying that too since it comes so hard for you!” His thunder fissures his veneer of detachment, and he knows it too because he throws up his hands with another bark of a laugh. “Why are you still doing this? Stop. Stop trying to manipulate me when I get enough of that elsewhere.”

“I’m not still -- how are you still on that? It’s been like two years. And you know I failed in that. Completely.” Drawing breath, Hermione resumes her rant. “It’s so obvious to anyone that something’s going on with you. Even Pansy was willing to tell me that you’re closing yourself off. You don’t want to talk to me. Fine. Talk to her. Talk to someone. Why can’t you just let someone show some concern for you?”

“Because I’m not going to be one of those boneheads like McLaggen to feed your ego! Fuck off, Granger. Go earn your feel-good points somewhere else.”

Lips twitching with defensive insults, she lets loose only one fueled by Harry’s suspicions as she makes for the door. “Fine. May you enjoy inheriting your father's mask."

* * *

** _August 1997   
_ ** ** _Greater London, England_ **

One handy-dandy trait Nicky Moore enjoys is never forgetting a face. 

She absorbs people’s features. The way they style their hair. How their eyes might crinkle when they smile. How different lines of worry might etch around their mouths. 

At first, she can only see the boy’s profile from where she’s standing, but as she jogs across to the house he’s facing, her recognition solidifies. 

“Hey!” Nicky waves affably at him as she nears. He definitely wasn’t this tall the last time she saw him. But the growth spurt looks good on him, especially for those custom threads across his suited shoulders. “Hey, you’re Draco...Malloy, aren’t you? Uhh...I can’t tell if you remember me, but I’m Nicky. Nicky Moore. We briefly met that night Hermione brought you around for a movie?”

A flicker of acknowledgement in his pretty grey orbs. “Yes. Yes, I remember. That night.”

“Do you still go to school with her? Hermione?” she asks urgently.

“As of last term, yes. But the new term hasn’t started yet. I...expect I won’t see her until September.”

“Okay...well, if you see her, could you tell her to write or call or send an owl?”

“Send an owl?” he repeats with narrowed eyes.

“Yeah, we used to joke about that. Because she said it like once when we were eleven, and then it just sort of became an inside joke ‘tween us.” Nicky breaks off her gaze meeting his close inspection and gestures at the brick house, which was like most of the other ones in the neighborhood. Except that it was -- had been -- Hermione’s. 

“Anyway, if you see her, can you just. Tell her that it’s -- hurtful, alright? That she would just up and move with her family as if we haven’t lived like doors away from each other for -- forever.” Her mouth puckers to the side as her eyes sting with moisture. “Obviously, don’t tell her I was crying, but -- whatever, you get the message.”

“Yeah, I think I do. She moved recently?”

“Yeah. The Yates next door said her parents were smiling about taking a trip out of the country. They closed their clinic and everything.”

“Hmm.” He rolls his shoulders, the blazer shifting to reveal -- just more black really, and what looks like leather straps looping around his left shoulder. Like he’s wearing some kind of harness under his jacket. 

His right hand draws a stick out from the leather holster, from underneath his left arm, and the stick flares white at her. 

“I’ll tell her, Nicky. If I ever see her again.”

And the light grows, frosting across her vision until it eclipses all that she can see.  
  
  
  
  



	8. Interlude / 2000 / Bulgaria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I tagged this as Minor Hermione/Krum...I meant it (*/▽＼*)  
Thought I should restate that warning.

**** **_July 31, 2000_**  
** _Belogradchik, Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria_**

* * *

  
  
  


_ In her dream haze rewind, everything replays slower than how it actually unfolded. _

_ But this part truly did happen slowly. _

_ Crossing the bridge, the triumphant stream of black-robed Death Eaters pouring towards their school. No rush in their steps now. No need. They spill from where the bridge’s mouth meets the school’s courtyard, and then they throng outwards along the perimeter. So that their Lord, trailed by his snake, can part through the center midst of their force. _

_ Right behind Voldemort plods Hagrid’s familiarly lofty frame, but he’s bent. A sagging tower. _

_ And in his strong arms -- _

_ An animal cry rips from Ginny, her father’s arm barely holding her back from charging to Hagrid. _

_ To Harry. _

_ “Harry Potter. Is. Dead!” In demonish glee, the snake-face crows at them. Sings it aloud, again. “Harry Potter is dead!” _

_ Hermione’s heart feels like it’s vaulted to her throat as Voldemort gestures for Hagrid to lay Harry down on the rubble. Next to her, Ron’s eyes match hers in their desperate scouring of Harry’s inert limbs. The still plane of his chest. His slightly-parted mouth. _

_ The Dark Lord prods him with his shoe before pronouncing to the rest of them. “From this day forth, you put your faith in me.” _

_ His robe swishes like the black smoke of soot as he kicks Harry again. More savagely this time. _

_ A gasp slices through the hush of the courtyard, and Harry’s chest seizes with another heave of breath. He’s breathing. And in that transient yet lingering moment, Harry breathing is everything good and needed in the world. Hermione’s stance tilts toward his prone form, along with everyone else leaning in. As though Harry were the sun that finally rose after the most torturous of nights. _

_ Get up, Harry. You always get back up. _

_Please. _

_ A flash of light whips down from Voldemort’s wand, and the Stunner knocks Harry back flat. _

_ The recessed cavities of Voldemort’s eyes peer down the line of his arm, wand still extended, as he re-inspects. Waits. And then comes to his own conclusion. _

_ “Narcissa!” he thunders. “You call this dead? This?” _

_ He whirls to stalk towards her, every footfall spelling the ruin he’s about to rain on her head. _

_ In her peripheral vision, a shadow of a person bolts across the distance dividing the rank and file of the two sides. And it’s why she never witnesses what befalls the shadow’s mother.   
_

_ She hears the woman’s cleaved-out scream though. _

_ And then more screams permeate the courtyard because an actual, enormous shadow passes -- glides -- over them. Over all of them. Blots out the open sky and clouded morning light. _

_ To replace it with an eruption of fire. _

_ “Mum! Dad!” bellows the copper-haired man who balances on the leathery nape of the dragon that has descended upon the courtyard. “Get everyone you can over here! Now!” _

_ Ron shoves her uncooperating feet forward. But his arm also catches her as she stumbles, her eyes wide and stricken. _

_ “Harry -- we can’t leave Harry here! We have to get him -- can’t just -- he’s alive, Ron!” _

_ “Hermione.” Ron’s clasp wraps around her frantic hands, anchoring her and stilling the probing swings of her head. “I can’t even see where Harry is right now. I’m going to keep looking though.” _

_ He bears nearly her whole body aloft then, hoisting her to his brother’s even more unshakable hold. “But I’m not the one leaving this time.” _

_ Ron! _

_ Ron? _

“Ninny --?”

She awakens to a pair of dark, concerned eyes. An aquiline nose. A gentle hand spreading across most of her lower back to lift her up from the bed, where she’s sweated and thrashed into the sheets. Her eyelids flutter as her vision adjusts to the chalet’s darkness.

“You vere dreaming about the battle again,” Viktor says softly, the row of his knuckles stroking closer to her shoulders now.

“Yeah, sorry, I woke you,” Hermione murmurs back, drawing knees to her chest so that her arms can enfold herself into a tighter ball. “You come here to rest, and I’ve pretty much been ruining that every night.”

She glances towards the window in this bedroom, though the heavy curtains veil the glass. Still, she discerns some light seeping through the weave of the cloth.

“I usually vake around now anyvay. For morning training.” He rubs the knot of her hands where her knees meet. “You still vant to sleep?”

“No, I don’t think I can, any more than I have.”

“Then...I vant to show you something.”

Layering a jumper over her shift, she follows him out through the first floor’s back door. To the stretch of relatively flat, grassy land back there. Prime real estate in this mountain-ringed town. 

“Oh no…” She shakes her head as soon as her eyes land on the red-shafted broomstick parked above the grass. “No, no, no. I’m going back to bed. You know I hate flying on a broom.”

His arm ropes her back to his side, his smile tentative. “I know. But let me teach you -- today.” His voice goes more quiet. “For Harry’s birthday.”

A sharp inhale, that shudders back out of her. Harry would be twenty today. 

Harry_ is _ twenty today. She has to believe that. Wherever he may be. 

In four hours, her birthday message for him should be rising over London.

“And because I can’t be here, vith you, all the time,” Viktor says, more emphatically. “If something vere to happen -- if someone vere to come here, looking for you…”

Her lips tug up in a weak smile. “Oh Viktor, even then, I don’t think I would reach for a broomstick.”

“It might feel different now. From ven you vere a little girl. Just try. Hold onto me.”

Hermione’s shoulders slump with her sigh, and Viktor glances away, plainly disappointed. But he’s right. She’s in danger wherever she goes. Multiple Portkeys dangle around the house, but it never hurts to have a backup mode of escape.

And it would make him happy. When he’s taken her under his roof. At his own risk and peril. 

“Fine. Let’s try it. Find out what it is about this flying business that gets you Quidditch buffs so universally excited.”

She makes sure to tie her mass of unbrushed morning hair back before she straddles the broom behind Viktor. Just one of his hands can nearly encompass her midriff, but her hands feel much less secure around his waist as she presses close against the broad warmth of his back.

She feels her feet rise from the grass, but doesn’t check with her eyes to confirm it.

Lightly, effortlessly, they rise. 

Below her shoes now is the house’s sloping red-tiled roof. 

Viktor moves, bending forward at the waist, and the broom quickens with his steering. 

She can see many more red roofs -- like theirs -- now, interspersed with trees that bear a greater resemblance to shrubs at this elevation. Can see the towering rock massifs along the outer hills of the town.

For the first time in three years, she feels weightless. Free like a feather adrift on the currents of crisp, new morning air. 

Is this what gets everyone else wild about floating up here? What never failed to stimulate Harry? Ron? Ginny? 

Even Malfoy.

Except. During sixth year. 

_ Happy Birthday, Harry. _

_ Wherever you may be. _

_I'm going to keep looking. _ _No matter what._


	9. Interlude 2 / 2000 / England

_ **July 31, 2000  
** **London, England** _

“Will it be the usual order then, Mr. Malfoy?” 

Other customers in the shop glance over at the young man in front of the counter, some with more discretion than others. To many pairs of eyes, he looks simply too young to match up with the accounts of his doings in the papers, but the same could be said of most of the Dark Lord’s leading Death Eaters now -- a pack of feral youths jockeying for his favor through feats of increasing body count. Even now though, one girl smoothes her hair before smiling at the young man’s profile. Another girl leaves the shop immediately. If other associates were around, he would’ve had to detain her. Ask her for identification. For her blood status. And then rip into her head anyway to confirm. 

But Draco is here alone, and a precautionary skim over her mind, one she likely won’t register at all due to the heavy fear currently dominating her instincts, uncovers no threat or major subterfuge. She’s just scared. She has one parent in the camps, and just glimpsing a Death Eater here is making her reconsider where to go for her mother’s medications because what if he takes her too?

_ Oh, but that’s something we have in common_, Draco mulls as he nods at the store clerk. 

He only comes here for his mother too.

“And a batch of somniferum seed pods,” he adds, grey eyes inspecting the glass jars behind the counter before fixing the clerk with a hard look. “Don’t even think about commingling it with amaranthus seeds for thrift.”

“Wouldn’t dare, sir,” mumbles the clerk, who commences opening lids to measure out seeds and to bag the rest of his order. “Appreciate your business too much to even conceive it, sir.”

Routinely, Draco sends a house-elf to pick up the orders. Earlier this morning however, he woke up with the raw, fresh memory of his mother contorted and thrashing on the floor for most of his last visit. Her curled fingers had squirmed to maul her own flesh, barred from doing so due to her fastened-down arms. 

Moreover, his presence in London today was required.

To stand stoically amidst the Dark Lord’s ranks as the rest of his colleagues mock-celebrated Potter’s birthday with more raids on Muggles than usual as well as magnified, projected replayings of their Lord stupefying the Boy-Who-Lived back into senseless oblivion. The boy whose not-death led to his mother’s raving mad state.

As Draco pushes open the shop’s door, he promptly perceives how many Monday commuters have halted on their way to work, some pointing at the sky while others just squint and gape.

Against a blanket of azure, the vaporous letters clearly spell out a name: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE.

Underneath, the name repeats, but speedily re-scrambles to read more chillingly and audaciously: I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

A smoky comma forms at the end of both names, and then materializes the boldest declaration of them all: HALF-BLOOD.

From a distant roof -- likely near the Ministry of Magic based on the direction, several spells fling out to dissipate the aerial message.

But the two lines just multiply, until “HALF-BLOOD” fills half the sky above Diagon Alley.

When, finally, one spell manages to dispel the smoky writing, the words disappear in poofs of white -- before raining down sheets of paper. Leaflets. Hundreds, thousands of them. 

Draco’s hand snatches one out of the air, its barely-there weight nowhere as comforting as a Snitch’s. Contained within the four corners is a black-and-white photo of a young couple. A woman just beginning to show in her pregnancy. Even if the picture were in color, her hair and dress appear like they wouldn’t be any less drab. She smiles at the aristocratic yet vapid-looking man beside her, but she also looks away, smile fading, as the photo flickers. 

_ Who is You-Know-Who? _queries the leaflet before answering its own question with the same two lines that condensed in the sky.

_ Tom Marvolo Riddle, Half-Blood.  
_ _I am Lord Voldemort, Half-Blood._

Draco’s left forearm begins to burn.

* * *

“I was hoping for clear blue skies today.”

Voldemort sweeps down from the high dais to stand in the concentric center of the marble-tiled floor. Nagini remains up there. A better vantage point to absorb both directions in this Ministry of Magic chamber. Her master’s vertically-slitted pupils survey the tiered benches of Death Eaters more slowly. More suspiciously. Before he smiles to his right. To his left.

But it’s a disdainful smile. The kind of smile Lucius used to deliver before one of his barbs. 

Sitting in this room now is largely a coterie of youngsters compared to Voldemort’s departed favorites and bygone lieutenants. Bellatrix, Snape, and Lucius perished in the Battle two years ago. Others like Nott Senior and Mr. Goyle simply retired to their estates. Among that lot, it’s their children who now serve. 

With all the eager-to-please fervor of youth.

“Which is why my earlier view over London disappointed me. Who was on duty in Law Enforcement this morning?”

A shaking hand rises, and rows of heads swivel towards their blanched comrade.

“My Lord, Runcorn and I were at the scene immediately. We responded with ten spells in the first twenty seconds, but it was a charm we had never encountered before.”

“Noted, Mafalda. We’ll take care not to ever throw you or Runcorn into battle then. Lest you two display such incompetence again when facing a new situation.”

Snickers and chortles ring through the benched rows. Mafalda stands, only to sink to her knees, pressing her forehead against the marble.

“It won’t happen again, my Lord. Another chance, my Lord.”

Again. Another chance. Voldemort’s never been generous with dispensing those prospects, but the failures and betrayals of some of his most powerful -- Lucius and Snape among them -- has made him even less lenient. More keen on cutting off disappointment before it can fester and grow.

Shadowing over Mafalda’s groveling form, Voldemort appears to deliberate over the witch’s demise.

But then his stretched-grey features twist toward a young man who balks and pales at his Lord’s sudden scrutiny.

“Oh. You think it a travesty, do you Burke?” A sibilant, soft hiss. “For your Pureblood, coddled self to bow to me? And why is that? Is it because you believe in the blasphemy across the sky this morning? Because your faith in me is so weak that it evaporates like those words?”

Burke’s chin quivers as he shakes his head in denial, eyes widening like a child caught lying. “My Lord, those are not my thoughts. Not mine. Never mine. Those are -- the thoughts that the enemy has most odiously planted. My Lord, how could I think so when I am not worthy to kiss your feet?”

He too prostrates himself. Crawls and bends his head to kiss the hem of his Lord’s robes. 

“Allow me to cleanse your head of those thoughts then,” Voldemort says, as tenderly as his voice permits.

Burke’s head does not rise from the floor. Remains low as it begins to shake violently along with the rest of his body in convulsions. Blood begins to seep from his eye sockets and nostrils -- and then from every facial orifice. Piss and fluids ooze out from underneath his body to the laughing derision of some Death Eaters.

Draco does not jeer with the rest of them as the head dimples inward at the temples, compressing into itself like fruit pulverized under an unseen fist. At least, Burke is meeting death. With Narcissa, Voldemort was not -- has not been -- so quick.

Parseltongue flows from Voldemort’s lipless mouth, and Nagini slides down from the lectern to coil at his feet, coming up to wreathe his shoulders.

“Let this be clear to all my flock. You who serve me. Whose blood runs through my veins enough to matter? Salazar Slytherin’s. Should any of you ever contemplate otherwise, then let me purge you of that corrupting idea. As I did here.”

His tone turns bored. “Dismissed. All...except Nott, Carrow -- both of you, Mulciber, and Malfoy. I need a status update.”

As most of the Death Eaters descend the benches to mill out of the room, Draco remains on the tiled floor, one eye on the fascinating, slow-growing radius of Burke’s blood and the other on the approach of Voldemort’s noxious mood. 

“Two years,” Voldemort pronounces to the five of them remaining. “Two years since our triumph at the Battle of Hogwarts, and still, the dregs of the Order of the Phoenix subsist. Spreading their taint. Biding their time.”

A technically correct statement, but it’s not as though the Death Eaters have just idly rested on their laurels since then. Snuffing out -- or immobilizing in some cases -- the lion’s share of the Order’s membership, Draco thinks darkly, ought to count as a good faith effort.

“We can afford them no more time,” Voldemort continues, and Nagini’s flat head seems to nod with him. “So -- status report. Let’s start with Potter’s class of compatriots. Who remains alive and a probable candidate to have been involved in this morning’s little display?”

“Longbottom,” one of the Carrow twins suggests.

A name that Draco’s glad he was never assigned. He still would’ve seen that hunt through to its end, but hearing the name makes Draco remember how he used to taunt Longbottom about his parents. About Neville’s mum in the crazies’ ward. Who would’ve thought that Alice Longbottom had ended up somewhere lucky compared to where Narcissa Malfoy is now?

“Offed him about two months ago,” Mulciber replies, flashing a smile with teeth. “Hooked the Lovegood girl in the same place too. What about one of Potter’s lower-profile pals? He shoddily trained most of the Gryffindors at school who were there when he was, didn’t he? One of our moles in MACUSA reported a sighting of that chatty blighter behind all those broadcasts, Lee Jordan, somewhere around --”

“Or what about Hermione Granger?” Theo cuts him off. 

A girl on a broomstick. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail for once. She glances over her shoulder at him, her face illuminated by the fire ahead. And then her head whips back forward with the motion of her wand carving out a path for them to all fly through. 

The girl who’d wept on the Manor’s floor. Whimpers as his aunt had crouched over her. Screams. That he’d closed his eyes against.

A memory from After. 

He remembers her from Before as well. Frequently as a scowling face underneath hair that matched that of her hissing cat’s. Freckles that had more prominently flecked her nose and cheeks in their first and second years. He’d looked closely enough to discern that they’d faded because…

Between Before and After manifests only silver-blue fog.

“My Lord, permission to approach?” A rare show of Theo being obsequious.

Voldemort waves Theo over, and the younger man whispers something into their Lord’s ear. 

“Did she ever return the book?” Voldemort demands, loudly enough for the rest of them to hear. 

“She did, my Lord, but she had a rather encyclopedic memory for a Mudblood. I wouldn’t be surprised if she retained the information. And I can think of few other sources from which anyone would obtain that sort of genealogy information.”

Voldemort’s attention snaps to Draco. “Malfoy. You were acquainted with the Granger girl, were you not? Bella -- and your father -- mentioned so once.”

His fucking father. Dead and still being a goddamn nuisance.

“I mostly ignored her from afar,” Draco answers smoothly, even as he feels the push into his head. Let him have the meaningless flash of recollections. The general annoyance and resentment from Before. The anesthetized lack of caring from After. Just another impediment in his way. “As you can see, my Lord, she was constantly an obstacle alongside Potter. And she dirtied my floor once.”

“But you knew her better than any of my other hounds here,” Voldemort comments, withdrawing from his head. Quick and efficient with his Legilimency as he tends to be now.

_Cursory bordering on improvident_, Draco has thought before, _crossing into arrogance_. Compared to how incisively edged and thorough the mental attacks used to be. And what a wave of exultation had washed over him upon finding himself unpunished for such thoughts.

“Including Nott here,” continues Voldemort. “Who seems to have attempted to make her acquaintance, but only remembers being routinely rejected.”

The other three Death Eaters crow out laughter while Theo just smiles sheepishly, but nowhere near the panicking shame Draco had felt once. The nerve of him.

“What can I say? She got rather pretty around fourth year.” Theo addresses this sorry excuse to all of them, but his eyes drift over to glint at Draco. “The same year she caught the eye of a still lauded Bulgarian Quidditch player. Speaking of, as I was reminded while chatting with the Head of International Magical Cooperation last week, Bulgaria still hasn’t signed an extradition agreement with us.” 

“And neither has Romania, where Charlie Weasley still rallies support.” Voldemort’s face hardens. “Malfoy. It’s been a good long while since you last brought me any quarry. Go home and pack. I think it’s time to pay a visit to our friends in the eastern bloc and remind them how grateful they should be if they want to remain in our favor.”

“My Lord, my domestic duties here require some immediate attention as well. Rowle’s squad did just demolish that bridge in Muggle London a week ago, and no one else quite knows how to deal with the Muggle Prime Minister --”

“Oh that old dodo?” Theo laughs. “How hard could it be regularly Obliviating and bribing an old politician, Malfoy? Here, I’m up for it while you go on your merry vacation. In fact, why don’t you hand over your backdoor keys to 10 Downing right now?”

Voldemort’s red sclera flash his way, probing again. Draco’s never asked his fellow Death Eaters if they feel the driving pressure of the Dark Lord’s Legilimency as frequently as he does. In the first year following Narcissa’s duplicity in the Hogwarts courtyard, Voldemort had pored through Draco’s head almost daily. 

“You sound like Severus, young Malfoy. Bleating out logistical, administrative, trivial excuses.” 

“Forgive me, my Lord. It’s just that Nott and I were also in the same year back at school, and I've always thought of us have differing strengths when it comes to work. So eager to see me out of London, Theo?” Draco remarks with a cold smile before bowing his head to Voldemort. “Then, per your direction, I shall leave tonight.”

Voldemort dismisses them, and Theo matches his steps to Draco’s past the door. 

Irritating, but Draco might at least make use of this pest. 

“What was so interesting about Granger and a book?”

“Oh that.” Theo grins. “I seemed to have once lent a genealogy book on the Sacred Twenty-Eight to Granger back when we were in school.”

“Seemed to?”

“Mm, I don’t even remember doing so, but when you have a mind like mine, tasks with deadlines tend to get lost so I write myself little notes around my room sometimes. And I was going through my old school things when I saw a memo I apparently wrote to myself about bringing that book to Granger.”

“So what was so special about this book that you brought it to our Lord’s attention?”

Theo comes to a stop. Waits for the Carrows and Mulciber to pass by before speaking again. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors, Malfoy. Even before this morning. I don’t give a damn about blood status in the same way some of our peers do. So, supposing theoretically for a moment that what was written in the sky this morning is in fact true, well where could one find that information?”

“You’re telling me that book deemed our Lord a half-blood?”

“Well, one shouldn’t believe everything one reads. But this book is enchanted much like those charmed family trees most of our houses have. No false information can be recorded, and it happens to show that in 1925, the last daughter of the House of Gaunt recorded a marriage certificate in the village of Little Hangleton. To a Muggle bloke named Tom Riddle. Not that uncommon of a name, but if you check the Hogwarts records and some old family albums, you’ll find that our grandfathers hung out with a certain fellow named Tom Marvolo Riddle. Curious, isn’t it?”

Draco’s impassive grey eyes study Theo. “And this notion doesn’t bother you? The idea of serving a half-blood?”

“Oh no, you saw what happened to Burke back there. Half-blood, Mudblood. I’d serve anyone who could crush my precious brain to smithereens like that.”

* * *

The Manor is practically always ghostly in atmosphere now, the fine furniture largely draped in protective white covers.

The _ Lumos _ of his wand hovers above Draco’s head as he opens the entrance hall’s wardrobe door. Rows of his mother’s and father’s shoes still there, charmed to not collect dust. 

With the backup wand he always keeps on him now, he casts _ Accio _ for riding boots. A Portkey will take him to Sofia, but considering how uncooperative the government there has been recently, it’s unlikely they’ll provide him with anything else to travel around the rest of the country. 

A pair of black riding boots flies into his grip, and he sighs upon closer inspection. He orders from the same shoemakers as his father had, but he prefers no silver embellishments, and these are definitely his father’s. He should throw them out, seeing how the bottom outsole is peeling off. 

Something rigid slips out of one boot as he calls for a house-elf to come dispose of them.

Small. Rectangular. Faintly, he registers that he’s seen one of these before.

“Master Draco, should Batty take that as well?” the elf asks tentatively, gesturing at the device in his hand. 

“No. Just take those boots and get rid of them. The rest of my parents’ things in here as well.”

He storms up the banistered staircase, the device in his taut hold. Long hallways separate the entrance hall from his bedroom, but apparently not long enough for a certain girl’s feet. 

At the door to the roof attic one level above his bedroom, he pauses to disable the spell-barriers around and on the door. Not even the house-elves come up here to clean. 

Past the door are ornately engraved wooden cabinets, their glass doors sheltering a variety of books, artifacts, and chronologically labeled vials. Impatiently, he scans his labels before grasping the one -- the month and year -- he wants. Moving to unbolt the cupboard without a glass front, Draco uncaps the selected vial to pour its silver-blue contents into the Rune-encircled basin there. 

Jaw clenching, he thrusts his head into the vapor.

And he finds himself next to more basins.

The ones he used when he was a sixteen year old prefect breaking apart at the seams. 

_ “I just -- watch you sometimes --” Granger has one hand gripping the other arm’s elbow hard enough to leave ephemeral marks. Her arms are bare, her pink dress sleeveless. She looks at him earnestly as she says it. _

_ He hates how his sixteen year old self looks back at her. How he looks stunned to hear it. _

_ Even if he’s snapping heatedly at her the next moment. Yelling at her to stop manipulating him. _

_ “I’m not still -- how are you still on that?” Granger cries back. “It’s been like two years. And you know I failed in that. Completely.” _

As the memory of her retreating from the prefects’ bathroom fades into murky haze, he throws his head back out of the basin.

His white-knuckled hands remain on the rim. Dull, blunted irritation has become his default response whenever he happens to hear her name. Silver-blue fog swirling up whenever he has reason to think of her. 

But he remembers her making him this furious before. Making him feel like he hated her.

The same bitter-edged rage prevailing over him now as he glances at his feet. At the crushed GPS receiver jutting out broken metal pins.

Of course, Hermione Granger and complete failure did not fit together.

And of course, she’d been a liar.


	10. Part II / 2000 / Bulgaria

_**August 2000**_  
_ **Sofia, Bulgaria**_

The penthouse room the Bulgarian Council gives Draco is decked out in black and gold, with a balcony overlooking Aleksander Nevski Church. Underneath a massive gilt mirror stretches out the bed, and set into the wall next to the bed looms an oil painting taller than him. 

Downstairs, the front desk had asked if he wanted entertainment sent up for the night. He’d promptly shot that notion down, requesting newspapers instead. He isn’t some neophyte at this anymore. In the earlier days of Voldemort’s regime re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Continent, some countries had wined and dined British envoys. Had welcomed them with girls. And had delivered early humiliations with those same envoys being found naked and dead in their hotel rooms. 

In his room, starting with the painting, Draco begins to cast variations of _ Revelio _ over every nook and cranny, ending with _ Metallum Revelio _ for good measure because even though most of the Wizarding World remains blissfully unconcerned with electronics, he’s discovered that some are more willing to employ hybridized traps. Like Theo.

Like Granger.

Even the colors of the room remind him of a July evening five years ago. Of stumbling out of a London bar and finding Granger on a stage. Of being drawn into the amphitheatre, transfixed like he’d never seen her before.

He runs both hands through his hair. It was a mistake to review those memories before he left for this trip. 

He should’ve reviewed more of the bad ones.

Emerald flames light up his Floo-connected hearth.

“Draco!” Theo’s head greets him from the blaze. “Good to hear you haven’t been overly hasty in your duties and murdered anyone yet.”

“Night’s young,” Draco replies, leaning against one of the couches to face the fireplace. “Should I expect continuous check-ins during this assignment?”

“No, just an amended order from above. One I think you’ll rather appreciate. You’re to bring Granger back alive.”

He just shows Theo a scowl. “If anything, keeping her subdued and preferably unconscious until any return to London complicates my job here. Was it you who persuaded our Lord to revise his command?”

“He didn’t need that much persuasion. After his initial ire, he certainly recognized the potential upside of questioning Granger alive in lieu of just parading around another corpse.”

“And what happens to her after he concludes his questioning?”

“Well, then I get her.” 

One thing time hasn’t changed -- the Floo still makes Theo resemble the devil plotting in hell.

“Nott. Aren’t you taking this Muggle appreciation hobby too far? I can hardly imagine that the Dark Lord would approve of this.”

“Oh, but he did,” Theo pronounces with relish. “He told me that he made the same offer to old Snape years ago. Keep your Mudblood docile and out of sight, and you can do whatever you please with her.”

Draco clenches his jaw, looking towards the balcony at the gold-capped dome outside. His mark could be sleeping somewhere out there, in the same city for the first time in years. To inquire any further of Theo’s machinations would only disclose too much interest. Too much weakness.

“Perhaps she’ll come quietly once she hears about what awaits her in London then,” he says mildly. “Is that all?”

“Nothing more that’s new. But, as for what remains true, we’re not the only ones counting on you to get this done, Draco.” 

Draco’s eyes whip back to cross with Theo’s. 

“As always, the Dark Lord reminds you to keep your mother in your thoughts, Draco. Think of Narcissa. Think of what happens to her if you fail.”

* * *

“Vot do you mean, I have to meet vith him?” Viktor demands of the government lackey they sent into his team’s changing room. “Vhy do ve have to deal vith any of them at all? I don’t care vat they label him as. He’s no diplomat. He’s just another murderer following the orders of --”

“I’m sorry,” the civil servant tells him. “But the Council must host him vile he’s here as the Dark Lord’s diplomatic representative. And this Mr. Malfoy has asked to speak vith you. Just to talk.”

Over the official’s shoulder, Viktor observes four other suited men approaching and scoffs. “Pathetic. This is exactly vat my grandmother used to say it was like ven Grindelvald vas alive. The Council von’t lift a finger to protect one of their own citizens, but they bow to the vishes of any dark lord.”

He slams the locker door shut. “Vell, where does he vant to meet then?”

Timidly, the lackey gestures at the locker. “Do you vant some time to change? Into a suit perhaps?”

“No.” Viktor glowers at him. “I just vant to get this over vith.”

They apparate with him to a hotel near the capital’s embassies, and he glimpses the Church’s gold and green domes before they usher him inside. 

At the uppermost floor, they knock on a black and gold door, and the young man who opens the door is vaguely familiar. 

But taller now. He looks down at Viktor as he extends a hand and a cold smile. “Draco Malfoy. Pleased you could make it, Mr. Krum. I used to be quite a fan of yours.”

Viktor doesn’t shake the proffered hand. Walks straight past him to scan the room for any immediate dangers. Intermittently on the way here, he’d thought about hexing the hired muscle and apparating back to his apartment. To warn Ninny. But what was it she always said about meeting face-to-face with the enemy? Every encounter was a chance to learn, to gather information.

“I remember,” Viktor tells him. “You asked for my autograph once.”

Malfoy chuckles, moving towards the room’s cabinetry. “I’m sure I was among the dozens that did. You want a drink?”

“No, I don’t indulge around those I don’t trust.” Crossing his arms, Viktor doesn’t sit down on any of the suite’s plush couches. 

“Blunt.” Malfoy lifts his crystal tumbler of green liquid at him in a mock-toast. “I’m sure some people appreciate that. Speaking of indulgences, you don’t indulge in much at all it seems. You’ve got the media confounded. Six years as one of the most talented Seekers out there, and still no tabloid scandals. No lady friends to have them with.”

Viktor glances at the newspapers fanning out on the coffee table. “If you vere only a fan of mine in the past, vhy are you still reading about me?”

Selecting one of the papers, Malfoy thumbs to the page he wants and places it back down on the table. Around a picture of Viktor scowling at the cameras are cartoonish question marks and a photographic timeline of his limited dating history. A Chaser on the Vratsa Vultures team. A girl from his hometown. Ninny spinning back into his arms at the Yule Ball.

“You remember Hermione Granger, don’t you Mr. Krum? You keep in touch with her after the Tournament?”

“Yes.” Viktor looks Malfoy in the eye. He can do this. He can. He isn’t even being tortured. Just daggered in the eyes. But not tortured like Ninny had been. By this one’s aunt.

And still, she’d lied her way through the cuts into her arm. 

“Ve sent each other letters.”

“How cute.” Malfoy tilts his chin towards the balcony. “You live in Sofia alone?”

“Yes, I just keep a small flat here. Vouldn’t make sense to have much more since I travel so often.”

“Hm. So what’s the house in Belogradchik for?”

Viktor looks at him sharply, and Malfoy merely directs a bland smile at the newspapers. “Local sources say that whenever you’re not with your family in your hometown, you’re in Belogradchik where you just bought a parcel of land and a cozy little chalet two years ago.”

“I have family in Belogradchik too,” Viktor answers, one hand coming up to massage his temples. “My grandmother vas from there. Ven I vas a child, she and my grandfather used to take me hiking in the rocks. So I bought a house there. I’m sure you understand. Ven money isn’t so much an issue, you see property you like, you buy it.”

“I’d prefer a summer home in Ibiza.” Malfoy grins at him. “Or perhaps an apartment in Hong Kong. But to each his own. So, is it remaining family that takes care of the Belogradchik house while you’re away?”

“That. Is not your business.” The pain in his head flares. A growing explosion of agony. Like when a Bludger that merely grazed him the first time around finally hits its mark. 

“There’s a maid that comes by now and then to clean,” Viktor grits out, and the pain eases back, like a rearing snake waiting for its next strike.

“Oh yeah? What’s her name?”

“Elena.”

“Really. What does Elena look like?” Malfoy takes a seat on one of the couches. He looks like he’s enjoying himself. 

Staggering, Viktor sinks onto a cushion opposite of the Death Eater. His hands dig into an armrest on his left and -- it hurts to even twist his head. Karkaroff had warned him about this, but Karkaroff had been one of them. One of these devils who burrow into people’s heads without permission, without care. 

He forces himself to think of anything else, throwing images at Malfoy of today’s match against the Heidelberg Harriers, of his reunion with Durmstrang schoolmates at a bar last month, of sleeping in his own bedroom at Belogradchik.

Desperately, he wrenches his wand out, transfigures it into a pikestaff before it even completes a full arc, and slashes -- through a flurry of feathers and cushion shreds. 

“Slow. I thought you were supposed to be the Seeker of the century,” Malfoy taunts him, up on his feet and wand out as well. 

Two curses shoot toward him in rapid succession, and Viktor blocks both with arcs of his staff’s _ Protego _ before Malfoy sends his crystal tumbler at him. 

A bolt of blue light from his staff shatters the glass into countless shards, which he sends hurling back at Malfoy. Viktor’s Shield Charm repels most of the liquid, but upon contact, the green fluid ruptures his shield. Not liquor, Viktor realizes as he lurches backward from the force of the explosion. Erumpent Potion. 

Malfoy’s Full Body-Bind strikes him straight in the chest. Slams him against the door. 

“There, there. It wouldn’t be very diplomatic of me if I killed one of my host country’s most adored celebrities.” Malfoy’s wand stabs underneath Viktor’s chin, tilting his face upwards. “Besides, I need you conscious for this.”

He can feel Malfoy sifting through his head quickly and efficiently, ripping past recollections of every girl Viktor’s ever seen until his brow furrows with concentration at excavating what he needs underneath all the other flashes of faces.

Malfoy walks with the memory of Viktor up the gravel path, past the hornbeam trees to the red-roofed house. Impatient as Viktor disables the _ Protego totalum _and other charms over the facade.

Was this memory from last month? Probably, Viktor registers faintly as his jaw and teeth grind, unable to even snarl. He can’t move his head, but his eyes still flicker up enough to see Malfoy grimacing with closed eyes, watching Viktor push open a door.

A head of brown curls lifts up from the bedding, and she smiles languidly at him. 

“Oh hey, welcome home.”

* * *

In the memory, Viktor had walked straight up to the front door before disabling any charms. 

Draco does the same, his first step on the gravel path cautious and then the rest brisk and purposeful as he advances towards the house.

Lazy of Krum to only ward the front door; Draco would’ve enchanted the property’s entire circumference.

At the entryway, Draco carves his wand through the air, repeating the same motions as Viktor’s, and the door yields to admit him into an open floor plan space that melds sitting room and kitchen. Casting _ Homenum Revelio _ and a Silencing charm in instant sequence, he keeps one hand on his backup wand as he inspects the first floor’s emptiness. _ Revelio _ confirms it: no one in the house. 

Which suits him perfectly. Gives him enough time to comb through the house for any means of escape and for weapons.

The first floor is no showroom of taste. The furniture is all different shades of wood. The linen couches too soft for Draco’s liking. And there’s even Muggle appliances -- a telly plugged into the wall. Natural light would be pouring in from the many windows, but all the curtains are down on this bright summer day.

On the second floor, his spine eases as he finds two furnished bedrooms. And then goes rigid again at spotting the cradle next to one bed.

This one, with the shift dress and robe tossed on the unmade bed surrounded by congested bookshelves, is obviously Granger’s room. He approaches the cradle and peers down at the swaddled white cloth. 

Not even a flicker of a baby in Krum’s head. Surely if --

His hand clenches. Even if there was a child, would that change anything? No. He had his orders. And he had his mother to look after.

He would just have to leave the child here.

But if he thought Granger would fight him to the bone before, then this just confirms it doubly so.

* * *

“Who are you feeding all this meat to if it isn’t ending up on your bones?” demands the butcher’s wife, plucking at the skin near Hermione’s bicep. The woman’s smile turns sly. “Is your Viktor coming home this veek? Are you cooking for him, is that it?”

“He just left actually,” Hermione responds, taking the proffered container of chicken blood and the bag of pork. “It’ll be a while before he gets his next vacation. And I wouldn’t want to ruin his holiday with my cooking.”

“Next time then, you bring him and come straight to my house,” the butcher’s wife insists, handing over what she probably thinks will become soup bones. “I’ll cook all this fresh for you two.”

Thanking her, Hermione hefts her purchases into her canvas bag as she heads out of the market. The walk back to the property is short, less time than it takes for her to climb the whole path leading up to the red-roofed chalet. The house resembles the others in town, the major difference being its higher placement on a loftier hill and its relative isolation in the center of a surrounding cluster of trees and stacked rock formations. 

Out of sight of the other townspeople, she pulls from her bag the leather shoulder pauldron and a gauntlet for her right hand, both consisting of double-layered hide. Both gifts from Charlie. 

Near the top of the hill but not quite at the house, Hermione veers off the gravel path, walking amongst the trees until she locates the triangular rock formation that reminds her of the Hogwarts Sorting Hat whenever the sun hits its facade, making its indents resemble folds of cloth. This sandstone outcrop hosts a small cave that Gryff has taken a liking to, though Hermione doubts that it’ll fit him any longer than the cradle did. 

As soon as her foot steps within ten feet of the cave, Gryff comes bounding out on his short red haunches. His wings won’t support him in flight for several more months at least. So for now, his body -- not even longer than her forearm -- bounces up to her knees if he tries with particular energy. Gingerly, she crouches down and tilts her shoulder towards him so he can clamber up her pauldron-covered shoulder. As small as he is now, his talons can still easily shred through her summer dress and down to the bone. To both Charlie’s and Viktor’s mutual amazement, her hair has mostly cushioned her neck from being gored by Gryff’s spike-ringed head. 

Most of the time anyway. 

She winces as she feels the tips of two golden spikes lightly stab the side of her neck. On her shoulder, Gryff is wriggling, his snout sniffing the air for the scent of meat and blood.

Admittedly, she’d woken up some days, amazed herself that the little Fireball hadn’t gored her in her sleep. 

But Charlie was right. Dragons could really grow on a person. And Gryff was sort of an unusual case anyway, a runt of his litter whose mother had shown absolutely no interest in rearing him.

Proceeding towards the house, Hermione runs through the ratio of brandy that she’ll have to mix with the chicken blood for Gryff’s evening formula. She could probably do it from memory by now, but just in case, she should probably grab the _ Dragon Breeding _ book Charlie left her since it mentioned that any imprecise proportions could render the mix useless as a substitute for dragon milk.

The front door gives way to her wand’s familiar motions of disabling charms, and Gryff squawks with high-pitched delight near her ear as they enter. Viktor had insisted that the Fireball spend more time outside now that they were nearing his six-month birthday, but Viktor isn’t currently around so Hermione figures that what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Or the furniture too much.

To her immediate chill, she notices a tea cup and saucer on their main table. Hermione whirls around towards the kitchen, and the kettle sits on the stove even though she had set it down near the couches last night. 

From behind her emits the wooden scrape of chair leg against floor, and when she turns around again, there’s a cruelly smiling, familiar man at her table. 

“Hello Ninny,” Malfoy greets her.  
  
  
  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Their wands go up nearly at the same time. Nearly, but that fraction of a second is all it takes for Malfoy’s Stunner to fire first. Hermione had expected that he would go on the offensive though, and his jet of red light ripples against her Shield with searing force, trying to break through. Flailing his wings with distressed screeches, Gryff is near-thrashing his spiky head against her barrier too, struggling to assail their home invader. One hand maintaining her casting of _ Protego_, Hermione reaches into her pocket for her alternate. Straighter and shorter than Bellatrix’s crooked wand in her right hand. 

“_Fumos_,” she commands, and the air fills with so much smoke that she can barely make out her own hands. Dissipating her Shield, she scoops Gryff up by the torso with her freed hand before vaulting over the kitchen island, dropping into a crouch behind the cover of cabinets. Above her head peals the sound of shattering glasses and cracking dishware. Her heart palpitations hammer so hard that she throbs with hurt for a moment, and then Gryff’s writhing form clips her for real, bringing her back to focus. Jets of red, not green. Stunners. Whatever Malfoy’s here for, it’s not to kill her then. Plausibly. Hopefully.

She flings open the cabinets below the sink, to grab the bucket of a Portkey stored there.

“Granger, if you’re looking for your bucket, I wouldn’t bother,” drawls his voice, thankfully not yet from right above her head. “Pretty sure my _ Revelio _ found all your buried Portkeys.”

Arrogant tosser. She launches the coffeemaker at him, the kettle near-simultaneously, and then every kitchen implement remaining on the counters. They bounce off his Shield, colliding into the furniture and walls. Trashing her home. With the precision of a conductor’s baton, Malfoy’s wand slices through the motions, steadily advancing. He looks like he could do this all day. Like whatever she throws at him couldn’t surprise him.

Blue lightning rips from her wand, and this one he has to counter with a beam of equal power. Their curses meet in a clash of red radiating against blue as they both dig into their stances with buckling knees and unyielding feet. Still red from his aim. Still not trying to kill her. Which means he’s trying to take her back to his master alive. The least she can do is make him grit his teeth for it. Sweat for it. 

She brings her other hand to Bellatrix’s wand, dragging the curse’s lightning up and to the side with the strength of both hands, forcing him to raise his wand-arm as well. Leaving his chest unguarded. Hermione’s left hand delves into her pocket for her backup again, to aim for a more direct hit. 

But he has one too, and his second wand whips out faster than hers, expelling a curse that blasts her against the cabinets to her back. 

The impact of her spine against the wood knocks her whole field of vision askew, and Malfoy looks like he’s walking on a tilted axis as he approaches with intent fury. 

“And here I thought it was our side that’s supposed to be using Dark Magic.” He stares down at her. At least he looks like he’s taking her seriously now. 

“Oh you liked that? Want me to show you it again?” She’s bluffing of course. Her arms lack enough vigor at the moment to even reach for her wands, but Malfoy _ Accio_s both to his grip anyway. His next flick of the wand grounds Gryff’s pouncing body, and she curls a gauntleted finger around the Fireball’s little foot clawing at the floor. 

“A curse that Grindelwald perfected,” Malfoy comments with an arched brow and twisted grimace. “Now that’s something I never thought to see in your repertoire.”

“What can I say?” Hermione huffs at him, frizz falling in her eyes. “Your father was right about one thing. They teach some useful spells at Durmstrang that we didn’t learn.”

Malfoy’s grey eyes narrow at her, and he drawls with open disdain, “Seeing how I just thoroughly thrashed both you and your boyfriend, I don’t think I missed out on much in terms of an education.”

His wand points straight at her again, his gaze determined. “You’re coming back to London with me, Granger.”

She shakes her head at him and stares back just as resolutely. “No. I’m not.”

Wordlessly, she propels the kettle at him one last time, this time from behind his back. Curling and ducking from his wand before she can see if the kettle lands, Hermione tightens her hold on Gryff and yanks the triangular sheath off her necklace. 

She feels the tearing force of apparition lift her whole body -- and Malfoy’s hand encasing her ankle right before the teleportation carries them away from Bulgaria entirely.

* * *

** _Nurmengard, Austria_ **

She transported them to the middle of fucking nowhere. 

Landing on his feet, Draco finds himself standing on ground scattered with pine leaves and conifer cones. His boots crunch on the ice over them. Ice despite the summer. In all directions loom trees, and whenever he manages to glimpse some distance beyond, all he can make out are snow-capped mountains.

Granger and her lizard landed in a rolled-up ball, but she’s in a crouch as he marches over, his wand freezing both of them in place. 

“You. Are the most infuriating creature I’ve ever known,” Draco snarls at her, grabbing her at the elbow. “Just. Surrender. Look at me, Granger. I have four wands, and you have -- a scrawny dragon that can’t even fly yet. Not even a kitchen around here, full of items you can hurl at me anymore.”

Her foot kicks a pinecone at him, but she has to grind her teeth through the effort.

Good. Maybe she’ll tire herself into unconsciousness fighting his Bind. His hold on her elbow constricts, preparing for apparition back to somewhere more populated.

Except nothing happens.

Granger smirks up at him. 

It’s like Hogwarts, Draco recognizes. Wherever they are, there’s a strong enough Anti-Disapparition Jinx thwarting his attempts at departing. 

And she brought him here for a reason.

He brings both wands up into dueling position, circling the forest clearing and scanning for any living presence with _ Revelio_.

The forest answers only with stillness at first.

Then comes what sound like wind gusts merely rippling through the pines. 

It grows -- into a tempest. A tornado. 

And it develops form.

Black vapor billows through the tree branches, collecting in a mass of roiling, screaming tendrils. 

Even when bowed before Voldemort, Draco has never sensed such malevolence. Such violent despair.

“Don’t -- don’t kill him,” he hears Granger urge the dark nebula, only verifying that she’s reached Hagrid-levels of beast-loving insanity. 

He can’t even discern if this _thing _ is organic, living matter, but he fires the Killing Curse. For once, he truly, desperately means it. 

The torrent of vapor evades his curse so swiftly and forcefully that the treetops shake frost down on them like powdered sugar. 

Curse after curse, Draco tracks the aerial mass with both discharging wands. The black vapor eludes most of them; some jets shoot right through it and some spells -- it _ absorbs_, as though it were feeding off whatever magic he directs at it. 

It grows until it permeates almost the entire clearing, blotting out the pockets of light through the trees. 

And then its countless arms swarm over him. 

* * *

Draco wakes to a canopy of patterned green brocade. Similar to that which had draped over his bed at Hogwarts. He sits up -- tries to anyway, but his hands won’t cooperate, adhered as they are at his wrists. A hand on his shoulders. Another tentatively supporting his back.

He jerks away from her. And Granger shrinks back as though he’d hurt her. 

“Where am I.” His eyes scour the lavish bedroom, a room straight out of a fairytale castle, even more embellished with tapestries and ornately carved wood than Hogwarts. Next to his canopied bed, Granger perches on a richly upholstered chair. It evokes the image of a throne, but she looks too worried to resemble any carefree royal.

She’s in a set of proper dress robes though, no longer sporting those ridiculous armour parts she’d donned like some mismatched gladiator. 

The vee of her dress dips lower than any other neckline he’s seen on her. And skating against the valley of enticing shadows there is a pendant. A gold symbol dangling from no elegant chain, but a coarsely knotted strand. He’s seen this emblem before. But not since he was a boy, thumbing through children’s books for his mother to read aloud. 

“You’re in the home of my benefactor,” Granger informs him, her eyes imploring that he presume true her words. “That’s all I can tell you for now.”

“Benefactor,” he repeats with disbelief. And then contempt as he gives the room -- and her tarted-up raiment -- another pointed look-over. “For all you claim to not care about money, Granger, you really know how to go after blokes rolling in it.”

Disgust creeps over her expression at his insinuation. She takes a breath, looking down at her knotted hands, and then chirps as if he hadn’t insulted her. “You’ve been out for a day so I assume you’ll soon be hungry. Do you want to eat, now? I can -- check if we have eggs or something."

He stares at her, jaw working at not just spewing curses at her. “No. I don’t want eggs. I want to know where I am.”

She crosses her arms, leaning back into her chair. “You’re resting in a castle, which I’m sure is more comfortable than whatever prison your side throws their detainees into.”

“Of course you still feel as justified in everything you do as always.”

Her glare hasn’t changed. “You really want to dispute that I’m treating you in a civilized manner compared to what Death Eaters would do if they captured me?”

“I seem to recall it was you who initiated the casting of Dark Magic at me when I was only using stunners.”

“You broke into my house! And you attacked Viktor and invaded his mind!”

“Yes.” No tinge of regret or remorse in his steel eyes or tone. “I did. I would’ve gone further if it weren’t for orders to keep the collateral damage under check.”

Her eyes drop to his shoulders. Skim over his arms and torso. Making him acutely aware of how the shirt on his back is not his. 

“Orders,” she echoes. “Yes, you’re so ready to obey the orders of a man who tortures you.”

Phantom prickles along the breadth of his back. His front. The last time he’d faced bolts of blue lightning like the ones flung from her wand, he’d knelt to receive them. Well, he’d knelt for maybe a second or two. Before the flaying had drove him to collapse on his front. Still such a good dog, leaving his back an exposed canvas for his master to continue flogging. They’d wheeled in his mother to watch that time, not that she was in the right mind to fully grasp what was real these days and what were nightmares. It was the composition of the horrifying tableau that Voldemort savored. The idea of ruining Narcissa’s precious, lily-skinned son before her eyes and mocking her attempt at sacrificing everything for a son who couldn’t even protect her. 

Though of course, by then, Draco hadn’t been entirely unblemished. He wonders if Granger could distinguish the scars from his master and the ones from her best friend’s hand.

“He tortures you,” Granger repeats, her hand hovering above the crook of his elbow, her warm brown orbs seeking permission to --

“Don’t touch me.” He enunciates each word, sick relish rising in him as her beseeching, inviting expression fades. “Mudblood.”

She doesn’t flinch, but she does withdraw her hand, folding it with the other one on her lap with professional stiffness as if she’s about to open a business pitch. 

“I brought you here because I have a proposal for you. From our side.”

“Not interested.”

“Well, you’re going to have to hear me out anyway. In case you haven’t noticed that you’re bound and at my mercy.”

Despite his bound hands, he stretches out his arms, rolling his shoulders as if working out the cricks in his neck. Before tossing at her saucily, “Try your worst. Mistress.”

A breath of exasperated exhale. She looks away, attention briefly diverted -- and he reaches out with his magic, brow creasing as he decides on the gold candelabra. Candles unlit. Though he suspects that Granger’s frizz would make for serviceable tinder should they ever end up stuck in a forest again. 

His eyes dart back to intersect with her suspicious scrutiny.

She lunges at him just as the candelabra comes hurtling across the room, narrowly missing her shoulder and crashing into the wall alongside the bed’s headboard.

He parts his mouth to verbalize his next summons, to_ pull _any accessible object more swiftly, and Granger’s hand surges up as if she’s going to slap him. 

But it’s just the whorls on the pad of her finger that land on his lips, silencing him as she glances over her shoulder at the shut door. 

Her hair, her face when she turns back around, is very close to his. Too close. Too familiar. 

“Don't try to pull my own move on me!” she gripes.

Draco rolls his eyes. “As if you invented wandless magic.” Warm breath against her finger. 

Her brow wrinkles, and she looks down at how she’s practically in his lap before scrambling off to the side of the bed. 

His tongue flicks out as soon as her back is turned. Tasting the ghost of butter on his bottom lip. 

He should’ve nipped her. 

Should’ve drawn blood. 

“Listen. I’m trying to be a semi-gracious host here,” she grits out. “But my benefactor might not be as welcoming if he finds out that you’re causing too much trouble to keep here quietly.”

“Well, I’m not a fucking pet dragon like the one you were keeping in your house,” Draco retorts.

Granger doesn’t fight him on this point, sighing like this at least is a discussion she’s had before. Likely with fucking Krum.

“He’s an Obscurial, my benefactor,” she says instead. “And you saw what he’s capable of. In the forest yesterday.”

That black, noxious mass of vapor and smoke. Those roiling tendrils like a thousand arms eager to tear everything within reach apart.

Draco studies her for any hint of deceit. If the Order had an Obscurial on their side, why hadn’t they used it yet? The destructive power of that thing yesterday...its lethal aura, its hellish speed. Its cancerous regeneration in the face of numerous curses and relentless growth as if it could swallow everything in its path.

The wooden door swings open, and a bent-shouldered old man steps in tentatively. Very old. Resembling Dumbledore in age, despite his clean-shaven face.

“Oh, sorry! Am I interrupting, Ms. Granger?” he asks upon seeing them.

Granger leaps up from the bed, approaching him quickly. “No, sir. I was just explaining to Mr. Malfoy that we have a proposal for him.”

“Oh, good.” The old man looks hopeful. Eager. “Did Ms. Granger explain what I’m hoping you could help us with?”

“She was -- getting there.” Draco glances at Granger, but her anxious eyes are focused on the old man. He’d been joking earlier about her mysterious benefactor being a wealthy older man, but this white-haired senior -- looks like he could be her grandsire. “But I believe introductions are in order first. Who are you?”

“My name is Credence,” the old man says before adding, “My last name is of no great importance.”

In Draco’s experience, the opposite tended to be true as last names could encompass a wizard’s whole identity, but he doesn’t press further, asking Granger instead, “Am I supposed to be impressed or something by --” He gestures his bound hands at the man’s poor posture. That timid countenance.

“Don’t be rude!” Granger snaps at him. “It doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever heard of him or not. What matters is -- Credence, go ahead. Show him the photo.”

The old man reaches into his jacket’s inner breast-pocket, pulling out a sepia photograph that he passes to Draco with both hands. A precious keepsake then.

The picture looks like it was snapped at a circus, considering the lightbulb-framed tents behind the young woman caught in the camera’s focal point. Amorphous soap bubbles float around her. Heavy stems of cotton candy bob from the cart that wheels past. Commotion and bustle and other people pack the scene, but Draco instantly makes out that she was the focus of this photo. She glances at what must have been the cameraman and smiles, holding his gaze as she leans back, perched as she is on her trunk. Preening playfully in her sleek dark gown. 

“I’ve been searching for my friend,” Credence murmurs, handing Draco another photo. No, a jade green flyer. Crumpled and rolled up and refolded more carefully many times over. “Ms. Granger says that you’ve probably seen her, more recently than either of us have. For years.”

In quiet astoundment, Draco’s eyes follow the curling tendrils forming the border of the flyer, the coiled body of the serpent that wraps around and melds with the woman at the heart of the inked depiction.

His mother taught him some conversational French, but he doesn’t even need that body of vocabulary to hone in on one particular printed word above the illustration. 

_ Maledictus_.

“Mr. Malfoy? I was hoping you could help me. Help me recover my friend.” The old man’s voice is entirely serious to Draco’s incredulity.

“Her name is Nagini.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another really rushed-out chapter sorry! But can you tell what's my ship from Crimes of Grindelwald?! Honestly, might write another fic about Nagini/Credence one day 'cause I go (っ╥╯﹏╰╥c) at their deleted scenes.


	12. Chapter 12

Malfoy’s scoff of a laugh cuts through the silence in the room.

“Certainly, I know in whose constant presence you could find your friend,” Malfoy apprises Credence, carelessly flicking the photograph and circus flyer out of his hands to flutter to the floor, though Credence snatches both back with a glower before they can land on the ground.

“On the occasions that I happen to see Nagini however, it’s because I’ve been summoned,” Malfoy continues, leaning back against the baroque headboard like some indolent lord addressing his servants from his bed. “The Dark Lord never lets her out of his sight now so whenever he apparates to the Ministry to issue orders, she arrives with him.”

“So you only ever see your overlord at the Ministry?” Hermione questions intently.

“Well, his brand of politics rather diverges from Cornelius Fudge’s style of kissing babies at public photo ops. More often than not, it’s his lieutenants who manage the day-to-day matters of governance.”

From what Hermione’s gleaned off _ Potterwatch _ broadcasts and newspapers, the political scene Malfoy paints appears accurate, but it’s more of a corroboration and not drastically new information from what’s out in the public. Virtually all of the _Daily Prophet _’s and other papers’ photos of Voldemort are dated from the Battle of Hogwarts or the morbid commemorative gatherings he attends on occasion. 

More frequently, Hermione’s seen pictures of his Death Eaters and supporters. Pius Thicknesse announcing a bastardized state of emergency after the Battle and immediate implementation of martial law. Yaxley proudly unveiling the Blood Traitor Re-education Program and the Muggle labour camps, converted from farms and stables that Purebloods had previously bemoaned for ruining the landscape around their estates. Alecto Carrow being ordained as the Headmaster of Hogwarts and henceforth prescribing that Mudblood students would never again enter the Great Hall.

Swelling and staffing the rest of the Ministry ranks are Death Eaters of the younger generation. Draco, she recalls from a photo of him standing stiffly with his department, is a Hit Wizard with Magical Law Enforcement -- a laughable appointment in Hermione’s opinion. Though she’d also snorted upon reading that he was bothering with a form of employment at all. Ironic really, that a Half-blood lord was ruling at a distance whilst his Pureblood lackeys executed his dirty work for him. 

“Where’s his base of operations when he’s not at the Ministry?” Hermione presses.

Malfoy’s insolent eyes glint at her. “Negotiation one-oh-one, Granger. I might have the intelligence your lot wants, but what do you have to offer?”

“We don’t have to offer you anything,” is the harsh retort from the doorway.

Hermione stiffens; she’d hoped for at least a day’s head start to question Malfoy on her own before Charlie’s arrival. 

His muscled build takes up most of the doorway’s breadth, but behind him she can see --

“Viktor! Are you alright?” Her feet cross the room in seconds as she rushes to -- translate her visceral relief at seeing him into running her hands over his shoulders in place of the embrace she’d initially intended. Her back still prickles though, from awareness of too many pairs of eyes in this room.

“Just a sore back,” he assures her with a familiar smile. “So just like any other day after training.” Viktor’s smile melts away as he pinpoints who’s on the bed. “No thanks to this vun here.”

“Krum, ol’ boy.” Malfoy’s eyes flicker between the two of them. “I must admit that I expected more from a former Triwizard Champion. I didn’t even have to break a sweat in Sofia. Your Mudblood sweetheart here at least made me work for a win.”

And now it’s Viktor’s turn to scan her with worried eyes.

“I’m fine,” she soothes him. “And Gryff is too.”

“How did you --?”

“She put up a decent fight by whipping out Grindelwald’s lightning curse,” Draco unhelpfully supplies. “It caught me off-guard to behold Dark Magic from Saint Granger’s wand and not yours.”

Viktor’s gaze and brow cloud with disapproval. Also familiar, this recurring point of contention between them.

“I don’t use that kind of magic,” he sternly informs Malfoy. “Not after vot I did to Diggory. Not after vun of your Death Eater brothers used it on me.”

Malfoy’s derisive eyes flit back to her. “How very...simple-minded of you. Good luck trying to win the war with that kind of approach.”

Charlie slams his saddlebag down on the bedstand table. “Don’t fret, Malfoy. We’re an eclectic bunch this side of the aisle. And I, for one, don’t lose sleep over a more forceful approach.”

The vial he removes from the bag is small and its glass exterior the same shade as Harry’s eyes, though Hermione immediately suspects that the liquid inside is as clear as water.

“Charlie, he’ll only become less and less cooperative if we use that on him,” Hermione says insistently, stepping between him and their detainee. “If we still plan on extracting longer-term advantages from him, we need his cooperation!”

“Frankly, I’m not convinced he’s useful for anything other than carrying out his master’s orders. His fucking job consists of Obliviating the Muggle government to brush mass murders under the rug. And wiping out the rest of the Order. I’m not going to stand aside and agonize over the ethics of using Veritaserum when you and I both know that Death Eaters would inflict a hell of a lot worse on us.”

“A Weasley with some ruthlessness in him,” Malfoy drawls, no fear in his eyes which drift over to her, taunting challenge in those narrowed silver irises. “He’s right, Granger. How can you expect to defeat us if just a few droplets of enhanced interrogation perturb you?”

Her jawline tightens, stoppering off any further objections she might have otherwise issued. Not ruthless enough. Especially when it comes to Malfoy. A haunting refrain from sixth year when Harry had basically argued the same. Malfoy was more than just a schoolyard bully, he’d contended against her and Ron’s underestimating skepticism, he was a full-fledged Death Eater. And Harry had been right.

She steps aside. 

Charlie’s frame blocks her view of Malfoy as the administration of the serum goes down their captive’s throat. 

When Charlie moves back from the bed, Malfoy’s eyes are cold and indifferent. He licks his lips. Then scornfully says, “I do still have my Occlumency as a shield after all.”

Charlie looks infuriated enough to pummel him. 

“I wouldn't be so hasty in saying that if I were you. Let’s see how your Occlumency holds up against these.” Producing a pair of chained shackles, Credence cinches the steel circlet of one and then the other around Malfoy’s wrists. “Grindelwald himself couldn’t overcome the binding magic on these restraints. He died here, with these on him, their power leashing his ‘til the end.”

“And I recall that it was Voldemort who killed him," Malfoy snarls back. “Considering how much practice I have resisting Voldemort’s interrogation, I think I’ll hold up just fine against any of yours.”

Resisting? No one else in the room seems to care about that spilled word, but Hermione turns from looking away to studying his blanching face. He’s already sweating, his Adam’s apple growing more pronounced as the indenting lines of his throat make plain his struggle against his own vocal cords. 

“Let’s start off with an easy one,” Charlie says, tossing his wand between his hands. “What’s your name?”

“Draco Lucius Malfoy, you cretin.”

“Mmm, speaking of, whatever happened to your boot-licking father? Did your master decide he’d prefer a younger groveling dog to the one past his prime?”

Malfoy’s restrained body is positioned to face them, but he looks past them, beyond them, his eyes boring through the walls as if he’s witnessing something else entirely. Answers derived from use of Veritaserum depend on the ingester’s perception, Hermione knows. Charlie should rephrase the question in more direct terms. Lucius died in the Battle according to all succinct accounts in the papers which had promptly begun referring to Draco as Lord Malfoy thereafter, but was it the inferno from Charlie’s Norwegian Ridgeback that killed Lucius, or the ensuing chaos and curses misfired in panic that had filled the courtyard? 

It’s not long blonde strands that Hermione imagines however, but rather -- a red fringe of hair. Falling into blue eyes. A freckled, bloodless face uncovered after they began clearing out the courtyard’s rubble. 

In truth, she doesn’t know if that’s how they found Ron. 

The newspapers reduced him to just another lined-up corpse. 

Lee Jordan’s reports had broadcast in confirmation that he was among the dead. Repeating the names for weeks after the Battle with no changes.

_ You show up here after weeks -- and you say ‘hey'?_

No resurgences of a tired, but smiling face emerging from between bare winter trees.

Her fingers swipe across her eyelids, pulling tight at the corners near her temples.

A rasping scrape from Malfoy’s seizing larynx, and then, “Yes. Voldemort killed my father.” 

“Why?” Hermione asks before Charlie can jump back in. “Why did he turn on your father?”

His eyes drill through her now. “You think my father was just going to stand there while Voldemort _ Crucio_’ed my mother? He threw himself in front of her immediately and tried to intervene with a counter-curse. Then, it was just the Killing Curse point-blank to his face.” Shuddering laughter along Malfoy’s shoulders and jaws. “At least, he got to die at his master’s feet. That’s what you think of my family, isn’t it Granger? A clan of dogs only good for tracking down their master.”

His eyes darken in accusation, but she can’t tear her eyes away. “And your mother? What happened to her?”

“Mad.” A strangled-out word. The metallic clank and rattle of his shackles oscillate through her ears as his hands, his arms, morph from fisted tremors to open shaking. "As mad as Alice Longbottom was."

Her hand hovers -- comes to rest on his. The shaking eases, but the disquieting metal sound of chains still echoes. “She’s alive then. And we can help keep her alive. You help us, and we will help you get her out of England.”

He wrenches his cuffed hands, his whole body, away from her, and his eyes -- every time she thinks he could not possibly look at her with more hate, he manages to prove her wrong.

“Don’t,” he spits at her. “Don’t you dare dangle my mother as an incentive to join your cause, Granger. I’m sure Potter promised her something similar in the forest. And for some confounding reason, she -- like the rest of you -- believed that helping the Boy-Who-Lived was the better choice.” He sneers. “Pity that not all of us had the foresight to move our parents out of England altogether before the war really got started.”

Dread and chill bleed through her, and Hermione retracts her hand, her own jaw clenching. “Did you -- how do you know that about my parents?”

“I went to your house,” he tells her, and her world shifts like she’s the one fixed to the spot for interrogation. “Twice, in fact.”

Twice. Twice? Just last week, she’d phoned the Melbourne clinic of Monica and Wendell Wilkins to feign interest in scheduling an appointment, and they were well and alive. Her mum calm and pleasant over the phone, her father’s voice drifting in the background. Monica had sounded momentarily perplexed upon Hermione mentioning that their daughter had recommended their clinic, but then the conversation had returned to polite, detached pleasantness with Monica explaining to her caller that she probably had the wrong number because no, they didn’t have children, though they couldn’t quite recall why they had decided not to. 

“What about Harry?” Charlie demands, pressing forth in the examination. “Where is Voldemort keeping Harry?”

“You mean -- what remains of Potter?” Malfoy’s voice reverts to languid insolence. “I don’t even know if he could be deemed alive at this point. He was breathing, barely, when I last saw him at the Battle, but what happened to Potter after Voldemort stupefied him one last time is unknown to me as well. No one has seen Potter after the Battle. I presume that the Dark Lord preserves his petrified corpse as a guarded war trophy somewhere.”

“Somewhere like his base of operations? Hmm? Where is it, Malfoy?”

“I. Don’t. Know.” Malfoy smiles mockingly at them. “And that’s the truth of it.” His gaze, challenging and defiant once more, swivels to Credence. “Nor am I apprised of where Voldemort keeps Nagini most hours. Sorry, mate. My advice? Forget about her because she certainly does not look like how you remember her.”

The old man’s posture is still hunched, his dark eyes still downcast. But he no longer looks timid as his hostile gaze climbs. Hermione’s witnessed enough of his transfigurations to recognize the signs of this poisonous anger, of how it can explode into his Obscurus form, and she extends a hand, not quite touching, but offering the balm of human touch.

“Credence, no. Don’t listen to him.”

He looks provoked to the point that he’s contemplating shredding Malfoy. And he could do it too. Easily with Malfoy chained like this.

“I wouldn’t listen to her either,” Malfoy suggests, with a pointed side-eye at her. “She’s just using you. Trust me, I should know. We were at school together for six years, and I doubt it’s a habit she ever shed.”

Damn him. Damn him to the lowest circle of hell. Hermione curses under her breath as Credence storms from the room, her feet automatically trailing him to the door. She has to go after him; his tempers could literally rock the foundations of the castle. Carve off sides of the mountain even. But to leave those three, on-edge wizards in a room calls for her to have faith in any of them being level-headed enough to show some restraint. And she doesn’t. Not right now.

“Come on, making sure that Credence doesn’t destroy the whole castle and us inside is more of an urgent concern than trying to get anything useful out of Malfoy.” She gestures at his fettered hands. “It’s not as if he can go anywhere with those on him.”

Resting against the headboard again and kicking back his feet as though his guests were departing, Malfoy smirks at her. “Is that a challenge, Granger? I can’t promise I’ll still be here when you return.”

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you. Those cuffs? If you even try to escape, they constrict. I mean it, Malfoy. Don’t.”

He doesn’t look like he’s listening. In that, she thinks sadly, he reminds her of Harry.

But as the sight of those shackles remind her before she closes the door, she cannot afford to underestimate and dismiss Malfoy like they’re teenagers anymore.

He is dangerous. He is not on their side.

And about that, Harry had been all too right.

* * *

They find Credence on the castle’s balcony overlooking the snow-dappled peaks and crags. Bracing gusts of wind blow against their cheeks as they step outside and approach.

“I’m not going to destroy the castle,” Credence’s turned back informs them, his tone peevish. 

“You did tell me that you once destroyed substantial parts of New York,” Hermione points out, leaning slightly against the stone balustrade, three balusters from where he stands.

“And you told me that Mr. Malfoy would have useful information,” he retorts, facing her with clenched fists. 

“I did.” She meets his eyes, squaring her shoulders. “I truly thought he would. And he’s confirmed facts of significance. Voldemort’s avoidance of being in the public eye reeks of extreme caution. Of cutting down on every risk that another one of his Horcruxes may be destroyed. Only two remain, and wherever he’s hoarding Nagini, that’s where Harry is likely to be as well. If we made a move on London, on the Ministry --”

“You think I haven’t searched for her in London?” he says quietly. “I’ve looked high and low in London. In the years -- the decades -- between when I stopped hearing from her and now, I’ve searched in Paris, in New York, in every city where she had some connection, and in many places where she had none. Wherever his headquarters are now, it’s remote and hidden enough that after two years, Ms. Granger, you have not been able to offer a single reliable rumour of a fixed-enough location worth venturing to Britain for.”

Clamping down on her immediate irritation, Hermione tightly grips the balustrade with both hands and tries to quell that flare into a simmer. This was why she’d originally been so reluctant to induct Credence into the Order’s activities and share their plans. His single-minded focus on Voldemort’s snake. Still a snake in her regard, despite having inspected Credence’s photograph and having listened to his recollections of the woman he knew. 

Malfoy’s accusing words return to her. Dangled incentives. Admittedly, Hermione lacks confidence that her dangled promises to Credence will ever come to fruition, and she’s always tried to qualify those promises as mere hopes, but he is too powerful of a potential ally to not try swaying.

“Other lives,” she responds, managing just barely to not simply deem him a selfish bystander. “So many other lives are at stake here. You have the power to save both the Wizarding World and the Muggle population if you help us take back the Ministry.”

“I was raised in the Muggle world,” Credence replies, unmoved and indifferent. “No-Majes, the wizards in New York call them, but Muggles all the same. Then, I met the purported finest members of Wizarding society. And you know what, Ms. Granger? Both worlds were utterly disappointing. Why should I lift a finger to help either community when neither ever cared about people like me? People like Nagini -- well, I’ve seen enough Muggle and Wizarding circuses. All of these factions, all they do is try to use me.”

“So you won’t help,” Hermione concludes, seething. He’s going to stand aside and passively brood as the world withers under a despot’s taloned reign. Just another old man with the power to do something, but not the will to initiate action.

“I didn’t say that. The original deal stands. If you help me reclaim my friend, I will help retrieve yours.”

* * *

Circling back to the bedroom where they locked him, Hermione finds Malfoy still there. Sullen and quiet as she enters and approaches. If it weren’t for how his slitted eyes flit over to her, she might have mistaken him as having fallen unconscious against the headboard. Had he felt too drained to attempt a breakout?

As she strides over to stand by the bed, the charred skin of his wrists answers her. Along the steel circumference of his shackles where the metal appears embedded into flesh, the burns look especially bad to her wincing realization.

“You didn’t listen,” she says quietly, too discomfited to scold. “I warned you about how they constrict.” 

“Yes,” he replies crisply. “Constrict. Not about how they might cauterize my hands off.”

His eyelids shutter, as if now, he’s about to fall asleep. 

“Why the fuck would I listen to you anyway,” his otherwise placid mouth snipes before smoothing back into an even line. 

She can’t release him from the cuffs, not when a Full-Body Bind would be insufficient considering his Legilimency, but -- Hermione clears her throat, wand out and suspended over his wrists. First, a charm to loosen the shackles’ constriction. Then, she bends her head over his hands before she begins humming. For maximal effectiveness, she remembers reading, _ Vulnera Sanentur _ should be performed in song. _ Crooned _ more precisely, according to the text. But the idea of crooning to Malfoy’s hands while looking directly at him is too awkward to fathom. In this position at least, she can focus on making sure his skin is knitting back together properly, regenerating with shiny new dermis.

He has long fingers, she recognizes. And remembers. From fitting her fingers between his. Swinging his hand in hers. Back then, he’d liked it when she’d reached for him and touched him. Liked it enough that it was a distraction. Back then, she’d fretted that his hands were softer than hers. 

Neither of them, she reckons, have clean, uncalloused hands anymore. 

“Follow me.” Straightening, she cants her head toward the doorway. “I can spread some Dittany over it so it doesn’t scar.”

His legs swing over the side of the bed, and he stands, eyes still narrowed, but not quite as suspicious. Just evaluating. 

“So we’re in the Austrian Alps, if it’s true that we’re in Grindelwald’s former stronghold,” he surmises as they move through the tapestried hallways. 

“And here I thought History of Magic used to be your napping hour.”

“Oh, it was, but you know me. I was always fond of the colour Rita Skeeter applies to her writing.”

“You mean the rumours, hearsay, and slander throughout her rubbish?”

“As far as I’m concerned, _ The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore _ is a riveting work. You never read it?”

“No.” Hermione flings open the door to Grindelwald’s one-time study. “I don’t have much time for gossip rags masquerading as nonfiction these days.”

Even after Credence has permitted her sprawling of books and papers across the desks in here and basically allowed her to camp out in this room, the floor-to-ceiling view from the window jutting over one of the mountain’s bluffs never fails to take her breath away upon entry. 

The study is gorgeous, and its stone-spiral staircase climbs to a private library rivaling any from Hermione’s girlhood fantasies. 

Even Malfoy seems not unimpressed as he takes full stock of the stately chamber. 

A coo rising to a flute-like trill drifts down to their ears. Followed by Gryff’s squawk and prickly head peering down curiously from the overhead loft space. Twin beating pulsations of wings.

Malfoy’s eyes dart up to the library’s railing and widen upon beholding the red-plumed bird perched there. 

“The Order,” he pronounces. “Has been grievously under-utilizing its resources. I’ve seen your nose burrowed in Scamander’s books, Granger. You never suggested to any of your ragtag compatriots that they could make use of a Phoenix’s regeneration in battle?

She scowls with disapproval at the notion. “That’s barbaric. I’m not going to bring Modesty into a duel and exploit her as some kind of shield.”

“Modesty. Is the last name a bird that flashy ought to bear.”

“Credence named her after his dead sister,” she hisses, her scowl deepening.

“Regardless, you should consider the value she’d bring to any fight. She could take the full brunt of the Killing Curse for you, and you’d still have another one soon on hand emerging from the ashes.”

“Still barbaric,” she concludes, slapping a stoppered bottle into his hands. “Here. Essence of Dittany. Spread it yourself.”

Malfoy holds up his hands, drawing the chain between them to their full abbreviated length. Scarcely an inch of flexibility more than having his wrists adhered with a Bind. “Can’t quite touch my fingers to my wrists like this, Granger. Be a doll and spread for me?”

Her teeth work at her bottom lip, sucking in along her lower gums. A nervous tic from childhood. Her parents had always chided her for it, for how it might mess with the alignment of her teeth. 

Her parents.

“Arms straight,” Hermione orders, uncapping the bottle and bending her head over his extended forearms. Carefully squeezing droplets from the stopper’s clear stem onto the pink regrown skin over his wrists, she sets the bottle down before clasping her fingers around the heel of his hand.

Her thumb skates to run over his pulse. 

“So he has a heart,” she quips quietly, rubbing wet circles over the beat of it.

His gaze drags from her hands to her face. At this distance, in this much natural light, she can make out the golden flecks rimming his pupils. 

She hasn’t stood this close to him in years. 

“I don’t know about that.” His mouth curls up at one corner. “I always considered the radial pulse the hardest to find. When I couldn’t, after failing for several minutes as a boy, I ran, screaming to my mother that there was something wrong with me.”

Her mouth puckers as she considers and decides on, “I found it easily enough."

She leans in to pearl beads of Dittany along Malfoy's other wrist and finally asks, more to his hands than to his face, “Why were you at my house? Why twice?”

Hermione watches the swallow of his Adam’s apple, the tautening of his jawline, as he answers. She doesn’t stop rubbing liquid loops over his newly grown skin. Dittany’s not clear and cloudless like Veritaserum, but an aurous brown closer to honey. And one can catch more with honey.

“The first time,” he breathes out. “Was in July before our seventh year. The Muggle-Born Registration Commission wasn’t officially inaugurated until a couple of months later. But they were already processing and preparing lists of names. The Carrows -- they were already set to step in at Hogwarts as the deputy headmasters. Some of the lists -- they must have copied from the Book of Admittance without McGonagall’s knowledge.”

She drops his hand and steps back, her eyes widening with horror.

A list. Names of all the Muggle-born children who’d ever received a letter from Hogwarts. And neatly corresponding addresses for where to send the letters. Where else could one obtain that information but from the Book of Admittance. Upon getting her hands on _Hogwarts: A History _for the first time, her eleven-going-on-twelve self had promptly dug through the chapters because after the initial excitement of reading her letter aloud with her, the question had baffled her parents too. How on earth had Hogwarts obtained their address? 

The Book of Admittance. She remembers tracing under the three words. Flipping to the index to find where else the term might appear. Explaining how it worked to Ron and Harry.

“Then you knew where I lived,” she says flatly, her mouth settling into a grim line. 

“No.” He exhales. Takes a step forward where she withdrew. “Not at first. The list I got consisted of just addresses. No names. The assignment was to verify which addresses corresponded to which names.” Another swallow, and his mouth seals as the muscles in his jaw work at sifting out the words.

Hermione grabs him by the wrist, slackening her grip as her fingers press against the raised new skin there. She has to hear _ why _ though. And not just the filtered version.

“So you went to my house to check.”

“I didn’t know it was your house until I saw you there,” he says ultimately. “You were -- just downstairs, having dinner with your parents. You had -- Nicky over as well.”

She lets go of his wrist again, her eyes probing for any twitch hinting at a lie. “Well, that’s not creepy at all. Alright. So what happened after you confirmed where we all lived? Was the Commission just too preoccupied with infiltrating the Ministry to follow up?”

“The list. Had addresses crossed off.” Malfoy holds steady under her scrutiny, his eyes just as intent on her. “People move after all.”

He -- her heart thumps with some relief, but her head is a _ mess_, deluged with conflicting interpretations and inferences and assumptions she doesn’t dare make about him. About what he did. Why he did it. 

“And the second time?”

“I was testing something.” His voice turns clinical. “An enhanced method of memory storage via Pensieve distillation. When you modify the spell to extract the memory, you can drain it more effectively. Remove it almost entirely.”

“And whatever dregs remain, you guard with your Occlumency,” she concludes. 

“It’s easier to survive my master’s interrogations when there’s nothing there to find,” Malfoy says with a shrug. His eyes grow cold. “I didn’t do that for you if that’s what you’re presuming. The second time was to see whether I could properly forget what I'd siphoned."

_ Nothing there for Voldemort to find_.

“Yes, yes,” she says dismissively, her head already racing in other directions. “You’ve said that to me before. You don’t want anyone to use your memories of your bygone days, sullying your sheets with a Mudblood, against you.”

He doesn’t dispute her phrasing, but he looks tense and then more on-edge as she flashes her own rendition of a cold smile at him.

“You look deranged.”

“Oh, I was just thinking how you do exhibit some occasional sparks of brilliance.” She swipes her index finger against the pulse at his left wrist, but with none of her earlier lingering. Clinical too in her touch now. “The Dittany looks dry to me. Absorbed. Your wrists should be fully healed in a few days.”

“In a few days, my colleagues will be wondering where I am. When they don’t hear from me.”

Wonderful. A deadline to work with. “No need to fret, Malfoy. The castle’s already beginning to feel crowded. I’m sure we can figure out what to do with you in a few days.”

But his eyes only look more clouded. More troubled. “I just gave you an idea, didn’t I.”

Her response is to partially open the door to the hallway from which they entered, gesturing for him to follow her back to his makeshift prison-bedroom. “You inspire me with many ideas, most of them violent in nature.”

“Granger.” He catches her wrist before she can turn the knob further. Her first reaction is to jerk her hand away, but Malfoy holds firm, his grip only loosening when he notices how she winces with not just annoyance. 

His turn to brush her pulse, gently. “Granger, look at me.”

She does, and he looks serious. Still unsettled. “Whatever you’re plotting, don’t -- pursue it further. I had training in Occlumency, first-hand practice against some of the unfortunate best. I was desperate. But memories aren’t something to trifle with.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She extricates her hand from his, her face shadowed by the overhead frame of the door. “I wasn’t just testing something when I altered my parents’ memories. But I had good enough reasons. Especially considering your list and the probable other lists passed around just like it.”

Maybe, he had crossed her address off and siphoned his memories for her. Or maybe, he had done it all for himself. Either way, she owes him no justification. 

It’s not as though he has any power here to reign in her spiraling ideas anyway. And he wouldn’t understand. He’d never spared any kindness for Harry. For Ron. 

One of the foundations of the life she's led since she was eleven -- fallen. Dead. For all she knows, the other very close to meeting the same fate, and the world as she knows it might hinge upon whether Harry is alive or not.

Hermione is silent, embroiled in the storm of her thoughts as she leads him back to his room. 

And Malfoy, in his quietude, appears the same.

As she closes the door behind him though, his expression strikes her as closer to resembling fear. 

* * *

“Radio check. This is Viola. River, do you read me?”

“Roger. Fair but readable. This is River. What do you need, Viola? Over.”

A protracted pause in transmission as she sifts through the papers on her desk, retrieving her notes from a broadcast months ago.

“Your correspondent in London. Hyperion. You trust him? Over.”

“As accurate a source as any we’ve had. You want his number? Over.”

“Yes. Let’s get in touch. Over and out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (ಥ﹏ಥ) When I started this, I wanted to practice writing smut -- and I'm still so far from where they can just fuck in a castle.
> 
> Also, if I skip any updates in the upcoming weeks, it's prob 'cause I'm writing my Credence-Nagini-Tom Riddle ficlet ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mention of suicide, not of a primary character, in this chapter.

Raised voices seep through his door before it unlocks again. Granger returning as his prison warden. Her Bulgarian shadow glowering behind her.

“I have more questions for you,” she imparts with an air of authority before adding, “And you really should eat something.”

It’s a common interrogation tactic, Draco speculates as she leads him, her body angled so as to not completely have her back to him, to what he presumes is the castle’s great hall. Granger playing at being friendly if not his friend. Acting like she cares. Seeking his trust and more imperatively, his cooperation. Whereas Krum’s role doesn’t require him to masquerade at all; he’s certainly not masking how fiercely he’d prefer to simply pummel Draco’s face in if Granger weren’t present. 

At one end of the great hall’s long table, a cluster of laid-out dishes. In contrast to the finery of the porcelain and gold cutlery, the meal consists of a slapdash painting of poorly fried schnitzel and stew resembling sludge. If the castle ever had any staff of house elves, Granger must have long banished them from the kitchens. The bread at least appears fresh so Draco reaches for that with a sigh. 

Soft and pillowy on his tongue, the bun is indeed fresh, which means that the castle is either close enough to a town for his captors to risk apparating to, or that Granger and her lot are also part-time bakers.

Which he doubts considering how overworked she looks. The blanket thrown over the back of her chair. The stack of newspapers and books beside her plate. The untouched food but stains along the lip of her coffee cup. All evocative of how she’d set up camp in the Hogwarts library during fifth year when she’d been preparing for the misery of O.W.L.’s and not plots to topple his master.

“Here. Jam.” She slides the jar over to him, already looking back down at her books when the glass edge chimes to a stop against his plate. “Reckon you’d want some since you used to slather it over your toast at school.”

Next to her, Krum looks like he’s of the opinion that no hostage of theirs should get jam at all, and honestly, Draco shares that opinion -- their piteous resistance is utterly too _ soft _. Overindulgent. Inducing a prisoner to cooperate calls for a firm hand. An iron touch. And Granger apparently can’t constrain someone for not even two days without extending a hand to heal and feed them.

But he slathers the sweet spread over his bread anyway. Bites into it while meeting Krum’s glare over Granger’s bent head. 

“Viktor.”

And just like that, Krum sheds his scowl, acting instead like Draco isn’t in the room at all. Granger’s quill is gliding faster than a Quick-Quotes Quill over her tome’s margin notes when Krum mutters, “But you haven’t tested the reversal yet.”

“No, I haven’t,” she acknowledges, her quill wavering. “It’s the same charm I would’ve used for my parents though. So it’s as good as any I can come up with.”

What do they even talk about when they’re not all business. Certainly not Quidditch considering Granger’s indifference to that topic. Or does Krum really just stare at her all the time while she expresses more interest in the books she’s poring over?

“Malfoy.” Her eyes dart to his shackles. “The labour camps for Muggle-borns. What kind of restraints do they place on the prisoners there? And what variety of additional on-site security do they have in place?”

Apprehension creeps over him again, at recognizing her set and determined face. “Why are you asking?”

Granger crosses her arms, features hardening. “Wouldn’t I end up there? If I came into enemy hands? After Voldemort were to finish his interrogation?”

What a stupidly naive presumption. Audacious of her to assume that Voldemort wouldn’t just unleash _ Avada Kedavra _ on her ignorant, babe-in-the-woods visage after lacerating her mind. That his master wouldn’t parade her before the Death Eaters and the streets of subjugated London. As if the brains of the Golden Trio would just get the regular treatment. Oh no, not when Granger would be the last of the Trio to fall into the Dark Lord’s hands. Her torture would be something Voldemort would savor. Draw out for the relish of triumph. 

Granger’s screams under his aunt’s infliction had resounded throughout the Manor.

But ultimately, that had been minutes of _ Cruciatus _.

After half an hour of repeated increments of that Unforgivable, his mother hadn’t even enough voice to vocalize the agony. His mother reduced to a silently screaming mouth. Her once-polished hands clawing at the ground, at her head as if to gouge out the pain. Her hair had gone fully white within a month of the Dark Lord’s sessions. 

And Draco had been able to do nothing but watch and watch and wish he could end it all for her.

What is Granger playing at? What will be left of her to go to a labour camp? Voldemort would carve out her thoughts, her memories, and her sanity until she’d become a mere husk of everything she is now. Even if she managed to endure that --

“You wouldn’t be sent to a labour camp,” Draco informs her finally. “Assuming you survived the interrogation -- Theodore Nott’s asked for you.”

A fissure in her resolute facade. “What do you mean, Theo’s asked for me? What does he want?”

His eyes descend, tracing the dips in the column of her throat, the lines curving to her shoulders. Across the low cut of her dress. “You can’t imagine what a male captor would want with a female prisoner-of-war?”

With a loud scrape of his chair against the floor, Krum stands and looks down at her, his face a storm.

“This is insane,” he rasps. “I vill not enable you in this. I vill not help you give yourself to them.”

“Viktor --” Granger rises partially out of her seat as well, but her hand slides like water off Krum’s arm as he wrenches himself away from the table and slams the door on his way out.

She doesn’t follow though. Instead, she sinks back into her chair, mouth wedged against her palm as if muzzling herself.

“I’ve always had a hard time reading what Theo wants,” she says eventually. “But to be honest, I don’t think he -- sees me in a sexual manner.”

Perhaps not. But she is underestimating how much of sex is about power.

“The only other thing I can imagine that he wants with you is to add you to his research team at the Ministry.”

“Research team? What is he researching?”

“I have theories, but no confirmation since he reports his findings directly to Voldemort. Likely among the topics -- time, death, prophecies.”

“Questions that the Department of Mysteries studies,” Granger surmises, eyes widening in recognition.

Draco nods. “Most of the Unspeakables refused to work for the new regime. A group of them barricaded themselves into the Hall of Prophecies, and it actually took us quite a while to break down that enchantment. By the time we got in, not a living soul remained. We could only deduce that they must’ve thrown themselves through the archway in the Death Chamber to not give up their secrets. And what was left -- they trashed most of their Department. All the prophecy orbs and Time-Turners shattered. Cauldrons of potions in development emptied. Any and all records of their research destroyed.”

A glimmer of light again in her eyes. “So Voldemort’s had to rebuild the department from scratch.”

“Yes, though it’s Nott who conducts the hands-on work. There’s newly appointed Pureblood Unspeakables of course -- but what Nott faced substantial opposition for was his novel idea of bringing in skilled Muggles and Muggle-borns.”

“Like scientists and engineers?”

“Exactly. Those he’s argued are too useful to dispose of in the labour camps. The backlash from other Death Eaters has been considerable however, which is likely why he wasn’t able to start operations until recently.”

Her hand sweeps over her hairline, fingers digging into her scalp. _ Does that give you a shred of hope, Granger? That he might have some use for you other than going straight to outright rape? _

“I don’t suppose…” she says very quietly. “That you could ask for me. Instead of Theo.”

He stares at her. 

“It’s just that --” She rushes to fill in. “If you were the one who brought me in, who delivered me to Voldemort, wouldn’t that be to your credit? Your -- accomplishment?”

Draco’s eyes follow her unrestful hands threading through her curls. If only he could go back to the days when he still thought her hair a nest. But after that fateful summer, he would glance across the classroom, see those curls spilling over her arm as her head bent over a book and could imagine nothing else but those curls across a bed, made to spread and fan out decadently like she’d just awoken.

_ I wouldn’t trust myself with you under my roof _ , he thinks with a swallow. _ Under my power _. Granger in all her naive foolishness. Fancying that feeding him jam and healing his wrists will turn him into some gentleman captor for her to easily slip out from under.

“I’d have no use for you,” is what he says instead. A surge of vindictiveness at recalling who has seen her hair spread across a bed like that. “I’ve been seeing someone. Keeping a Mudblood in the Manor -- the talk that would ensue -- it would be an insult to her.”

She has no right to look that -- at a loss for words. “Oh. Can I ask -- who?”

“Astoria Greengrass. She was two years behind us at school.”

“Oh. Yes, I remember.” Her mouth curls up at one corner, but it’s a snide smile as she adds archly, “Didn’t you used to consort with her sister?”

He did. Had vaunted their liaisons in front of Granger’s little miss prefect self too. “That was relatively casual. Daphne doesn’t begrudge her sister’s happiness.”

“Of course,” Granger comments dryly. “All you Purebloods carrying on in your incestuous social circles.”

“Are you referring to how Daphne’s blonde? Astoria looks nothing like her --”

“Anyway,” she cuts in crisply. “I guess I will have to figure out what Theo wants then. Is he a Legilimens like you?”

“No.” She’s fucking unbelievable. Talking about giving herself over like no one can hurt her. As a fourth year, she’d soapboxed about house-elf rights to anyone who would stand long enough to listen, but when it comes to talking about herself, she’s ready to let anyone have a bite at her.

A blip of caustic laughter escapes him. “I can’t believe you were suggesting that I’d ask the Dark Lord for you. Do you think shared history would’ve made me a kinder master? That I wouldn’t use you as brutally as the rest of them? Or is it because you think you could handle me? Puppet me again to your desires?”

“No,” she refutes. “It’s because I would need to stay alive for a while to make this all worth it. And you seem more averse to executing people you used to know.”

His eyes narrow, voice lowering in menace. “Try me, Granger. Take off these cuffs and let’s see if that’s true.”

“Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan,” she starts listing off. “Anthony Goldstein, Ernie Macmillan, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones. Kingsley Shacklebolt. You didn’t kill any of them. You just captured.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Draco demands, ice clinging to every word. “How being forced to go on living can be worse than death sometimes? I’m sure Thomas wished I’d killed him. Considering how he had to_ Avada _the mother who didn’t give him up as a child even though his father abandoned her.” 

After a string of suicides, Draco had learned there weren’t sheets allocated for the camp cots anymore. The noose Thomas had fashioned, in the moments of terrible coherency they’d allowed him, had been from his own knotted jumpsuit.

“The half-bloods -- do you know what my peers gradually _ Imperio _them into doing? They get to do the work of hunting down whichever one of their parents is a Muggle for us. And then they get the honors of killing their mother or father. Macmillan, Abbott, Shacklebolt. You know what made my orders different for those individuals? Precious, precious blood of the Sacred Twenty-Eight in their veins, in spite of the dilution. But you, Granger, you wouldn’t be sent to the Re-education Program.”

Compared to how unflinching she appeared minutes ago, Granger looks as young and helpless as she had when the Snatchers had dragged her into the Manor.

But not nearly enough dissuaded. 

“Out of all of us,” Draco acknowledges hoarsely. “You’ve managed to keep your parents alive. You could keep it that way. But this idea of surrendering yourself and returning to England -- why give it all up? Potter -- as worthless as he is -- if he were alive, he would be here. If you go back for him, you are risking it all for confirmation of a corpse.”

Her face disconcertingly stony and frozen. It’s a possibility she must’ve also contemplated, without fully coming to terms with the real prospect -- that Potter might already be dead.

“Harry’s not dead,” is what she concludes though, her eyes on the clock now. “You yourself confirmed that no one’s seen him since the Battle. Inclusive, I presume, of his -- body being strung up for Voldemort to broadcast to all of you. As sick as your master is, he doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type to retain a corpse for two years.”

All cold, hard logic and forward-looking focus in her reasoning. The way she talks about her saintly friend’s potential corpse. The way she discusses giving herself over. This, Draco detects, is the side of her that must have kept Potter and Weasley alive while on the run for months. The Hermione Granger that built Dumbledore’s Army and made sure everyone knew Marietta Edgecombe was the one that had betrayed them.

The girl who decided she could use him to get to his father.

And the way she studies him now -- only hints that she’s about to use him to get to someone else.

* * *

She has to apparate all the way to Innsbruck for a secure-enough means of calling the number Lee’s conveyed to her.

But first -- Hermione checks the crescent-and-star hands on the clock tower’s face. Enough time to stop at the library.

Before attending Hogwarts, she’d kept a diary of regular entries for maybe half a year, and then, just when her life felt like it was actually beginning anew, she’d rapidly collected too many secrets to store on paper anywhere. 

Sliding into a seat in front of one of the free-use computers at the city library, she logs into the email account she hasn’t accessed in over a year and presses down for the first bullet point before she can careen into a stream of consciousness deluge of everything she has to encapsulate.

A timeline format, she decides, makes the most sense, and the list has to start with the memories of sixth year. Standing with Harry on the balcony of the Astronomy Tower where Dumbledore had met his death just the evening before. Harry’s obtusely stubborn and brave self telling her that he wouldn’t be coming back in the fall. Her and Ron’s replies that they wouldn’t either then. 

Almost ten months on the run and in the cold and sometimes feeling like she hated Harry while other dawns and nights, he was all she had left to cling to.

A bullet point for each month? No, she reconsiders as her hands flit over the keyboard. For each Horcrux. 

Only the most essential facts and theories about each. The same for the Hallows.

Her last bullet point. She stabs the words into existence._ Harry is a Horcrux _.

Ron insisting for Harry to not walk into the forest alone, to not give himself up. Herself avowing that she’d follow him into death itself.

The last time they’d spoken to Harry. Alive. 

Somewhere between Malfoy’s assessment and her own is the truth, she senses. Voldemort has not killed Harry. Not absolutely. Because he must’ve realized in the forest or at the Battle what Harry is. How keeping one of his last two Horcruxes alive, in some form, is more valuable than eliminating his remaining tethers to immortality.

And if she is risking it all to recover the shell of him from that monster, it is still worth it. She has to go to London for him. Because he would’ve beaten the odds and done the same for her. Because Harry’s always been there. Since she was eleven and friendless and no one liked her and even he didn’t quite like her back then, but he’s always been there. 

The somber possibility that she might never get some of her memories back after tonight ripples through her, and her hands shake as she deletes some of the bullets, revising. How to reduce and compress years into only the most crucial, backup summary?

What she ultimately prints out at the library is a sheaf of what would look like another set of student notes to anyone else’s eyes.

With those papers in her bag, she heads next to a public payphone booth, a metallic box unlike the red ones back home.

The number Lee gave her rings three, four times before a distorted voice picks up.

“Hello?” Masculine in pitch, but also not completely human. Robotic. 

“Hyperion?” Hermione asks into the phone’s mouthpiece. “Are you...using a voice scrambler?”

“Yes to both. And this is a burner phone.” A touch of smugness through the connection. “You’re Viola, I presume?”

“Yes. Though you know who I am.”

“Of course. I was -- I am, that is, honored. I’ve asked River for a more important assignment for months, and he kept saying maybe, maybe. But to be able to assist you in any way -- I’m ready. For whatever you ask of me.”

“It’s both -- not a huge task but also absolutely critical,” Hermione explains. “You’re located in London right?”

“Yes, I guess you could say I’ve just had my debut in society.”

Almost certainly a Pureblood then. Hermione’s mind races through the possibilities. Could it be someone not entirely brainwashed by the Re-Education Program? No use in asking for further identification now when she’ll only have to soon forget it anyway. “We might shortly cross paths in person then without knowing it. Since I’ll find myself in London soon.”

A hitch interrupted by electronic crackle. “That would not be wise for someone in your position, Viola.”

“So everyone tells me. But the assignment is simply this: I need you to come find me after my arrival. Not immediately. I imagine that --” Malfoy’s words waft back to her. “That they might parade me around in the immediate aftermath. And I suppose this whole mission is contingent upon my surviving that stage. But when the fanfare dies down and if I’m still alive at that point, someone else from our side will reach out to you. Within an hour of that contact, I will need you to come find me. I will be...confused. Mistrustful most likely. But I need you to remind me that I intended to return to London.”

“That’s all? I can do more, I swear it --”

“Trust me. It may not sound like much, but it is critical to the larger mission. Most importantly, you will need to tell me that I need to reach Borgin and Burkes within the hour.”

“Alright...but what if you can’t? I mean, the kind of custody they’ll probably keep you under --”

Hermione traces a triangle on one of the booth’s glass walls. A circle enclosed. A line through both.

What is Theo like these days? As fond of Muggle technology as he frightfully was in their teens?

The informant at the other end of the line reminds her of Theo in that respect. A Pureblood keen on playing with Muggle toys and hopefully, crucially, not a believer in Pureblood ideology.

She can only pray that the other person is not in fact Theo and that she has not just wandered into a trap.

“Worse comes to worst,” Hermione says with a mirthless laugh. “If I can’t make it to Borgin and Burkes, you could always just remind me to check my email.”

* * *

Malfoy is reading the newspaper upon Hermione’s return to the castle. The most recent issue of the _ Prophet _that Viktor brought for her and that she gave to their captive guest to keep him somewhat preoccupied. 

He sets it down as she enters the room, and on the face-up page is the black-garbed, grim procession of a funeral. A prominent death then.

“Did you know him?” she asks Malfoy, tilting her head at the paper.

“Burke,” he replies with a shrug. “Was one of my associates at the Ministry I suppose.” And then Malfoy’s eyes glint at her. “Until he dared to let your little message in the sky taint his thoughts.”

She looks at him sharply. “And Voldemort murdered him just for thinking about it? The point of that message was to make people think. How could anyone who saw it not have some thoughts about it?”

“Oh I’m sure everyone did, but Burke had the gall to believe it. And wonder why he was serving a half-blood mongrel while in the presence of said half-blood lord.”

She picks up the paper for a closer look at the funeral, at the cortege of stone faces. “I can’t imagine his Pureblood family is pleased about the circumstances of his passing. No honorable death in service for his lord.”

“You think they dare to show any hint of displeasure after what Voldemort killed him for?”

Skimming the_ Prophet _’s obituary, she mulls aloud, “Well, it says here that his family’s part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Can’t imagine that it wouldn’t rankle those other families to hear that one of their precious Pureblood sons could be so easily dispatched by a master who’s not actually one of their limited number.”

Malfoy just scoffs. “As if they could do anything about that.”

An angry set to his mouth. 

Hermione sets the paper back down and announces with a sigh, “You’re going to see your mother again. And very soon.”

The longer she holds Malfoy here, the less useful he becomes. The more doubtful Voldemort will be of him when he returns.

To his suspicious silver gaze, she condenses the explanation to, “Don’t worry. You’ll be going back to London in triumph. A conquering hero I’m sure, to your side.”

She glances at the door -- Charlie’s supposed to be here as backup for this next step.

Even handcuffed, Malfoy moves faster than her though.

He’s off the bed before her head even fully swivels around, and his hands immobilize her right arm -- her wand arm -- while the rest of him shoves her against the wall, his shoulders and the enveloping frame of his body pinning her there.

With an indignant buck of her hips, she tries to push for an inch of space, for some room for her leg to lash out, but he stands firm, his feet pressing down on hers and his thighs forcing her to flatten against the wall when there’s nowhere else to go. 

“You’re uncomfortable.” Malfoy’s voice drifts down to her, considering how she’s eye-level and ready to snap with teeth at his upper pectoral.

“Yes, I’m uncomfortable when men corner me up against a wall,” she spits at his chest.

“Well imagine how it will be when it’s someone even worse than me.”

His words flood an ice bath of fear through her veins. Theo did this to her once.

And she’s more willing to wager that he hasn’t changed. Would do it again. And to whom else would she be giving power over herself?

“I can’t imagine anyone worse than you,” she retorts, and he snorts because they both know the falsehood in that. 

“Don’t do this,” he tells her, and pressed this close to him, she can see the swallow of his throat so much more plainly. “You are both the brightest and most foolish person I’ve known, and this is more reckless than anything else you’ve ever attempted.”

She stares very hard at below his chin. Her own throat, she senses with alarm, is clogging with things she wants to cry about and confess, and he is making it very hard to keep anything sealed back. 

“I have to,” she says, in a voice that sounds small even to her own ears.

“You don’t have to. Not for Potter, not for anyone. Do something for yourself for once. Stay here, where you’re safe. In London, they will only hurt you. You remember my aunt. How long could you endure under many more who are just like her? Who will only take pleasure in ruining you. And the damage you’ll inflict on your mind -- I heard you earlier. You haven’t even fully tested out your memory charm’s reversal. Weren’t you the one who warned me about how messing with a person’s memories could harm their mind in other ways?”

A dry laugh escapes her. “Didn’t stop you from Obliviating Theo though.”

“No. And I wouldn’t mind giving him some further brain damage. You --” 

His bound hands form a shackle of their own around her right wrist. Can he make out her radial pulse there? His breastbone feels like armour, but she can feel the beat right over his heart. And he has one. And she feels so very sorry for testing out whether he had one when they were fifteen, for toying with him back when she could’ve had him more open and bared than he’ll ever be to her now. 

“What happened between us before fifth year --” She stops, searching for the words to rephrase. His eyes scour harshly over her face, but at least he’s been honest with her whereas she’s never been able to concede her intentions that summer. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers finally. “For using you like that. I’m sorry, and I wish I could go back and redo it and never go after you like that. I’m sure you wish the same.”

His gaze rises, to bore into the wall above her head. He doesn’t refute her statement. “You’re too devious for your own good, Granger. Maybe it’s for the greater good. Of the world or whatever noble cause you fight for. But you’re as bad with collateral damage as I am when it comes to people in your way.”

She can’t see the scars under his shirt now, the ones she’d initially glimpsed upon his capture. Striations from the same strain of lightning bolt curse she’d flung at him. He has not mentioned once, in worry or fear, what will happen to him if he returns to London without her. What Voldemort will do to him. And how much more his mother will have to bear for not only her disloyalty, but also her son’s hesitations and failures. 

But if he brings her back -- she’s read and heard that he’s adept at his job, at the hunting and tracking aspect if not the killing. And what could be more of a crowning achievement in his master’s eyes than bringing back Potter’s Mudblood?

“Malfoy.” Charlie’s voice slices through the room. “If you don’t move away from Hermione this instant, I will remove your spine from your body.”

His grey eyes don’t move from hers as he backs off, away from her, and she knows it’s a sort of betrayal again in his eyes when they discern how her wand flashes out near immediately.

“I’m sorry for this too,” she whispers before stunning him unconscious.

* * *

For Malfoy, a complete wipe of the last two days.

For herself --

Viktor’s dark eyes flit between the margin notes in the text and the bullet points she’d printed out at the library. And then to her, perched on the edge of the bed with her hands tucked under her thighs. 

“It can’t just be a wipe of the last two years,” Hermione says, biting her lip and watching his plagued reaction as he reviews her crowded notes. “Voldemort will recognize there’s been obvious tampering if I simply recall nothing from end of sixth year onwards. He knows we were on the run for months. That we were in Gringotts and Godric’s Hollow seeking for clues to something. When he goes through my head for what we were up to, for anything related to the Horcruxes or Hallows, the memory has to be altered so it’s as though Harry directed us to do those things, but kept us in the dark about why.”

“Vy,” Viktor echoes. “Vy must you do this. Vy can you not vait so ve can think of another vay together?”

Hermione has thought about other ways. About replicating Malfoy’s Pensieve extraction. But Malfoy’s reminder about his training in Occlumency compared to her complete lack in it had made her promptly cognizant that it would be too risky retaining buried dregs of memories for Voldemort’s potential discovery. 

“How much longer can we afford to wait?” she answers, taking his calloused grip into hers and passing the necklace of the Hallows’ emblem into his keeping. “While Voldemort consolidates power?” 

“Ve have dragons,” he contends insistently. “Fleur’s sent news that the Velsh Green vill tolerate her on its back for longer now --”

“Longer than a minute?” She gives a little laugh, squeezing his hand very tightly. “It took Charlie years to develop enough of a bond with Norberta to become her rider. We don’t even know if Gryff will reject us when he’s older.”

“I’m not just worried about Voldemort and how pervasive Dark Magic has become,” Hermione continues. “What Malfoy informed us today about Theo’s research team. The Ministry’s always had influence over the Muggle government, no doubt even more outright now. You haven’t seen the scale of how much damage some Muggle weapons can inflict. The Killing Curse, even the explosions they’ve been discharging in Muggle London -- they don’t compare to some weapons made by Muggle scientists. If Theo should ever get his hands on such technology, he’d use it. Or find a way to develop curses to reproduce that destructive capacity.” 

He’s listened to her rant like this time and time again, but never has she seen him look so stricken. 

“Vot if it doesn’t vork like you planned? The reversal. Untested. Vot if ve can’t restore your memories?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She hugs him close to not look at the pain and doubt across his features, kissing his forehead. The deep furrow between his brows. “It’s like the Fidelius Charm. And you’ll be like my Secret Keeper. The way I designed it for my parents -- only I’d be able to reverse their memory alteration. I’m counting on you to do the same for me. To come find me when it’s time.”

His arms feel like bands of iron across her back, around her waist. Thank you, she murmurs into the ball of his shoulder. _ Thank you for protecting me. For giving me a home. But I can’t stay in a house in the mountains just waiting for you while learning what my old home’s become. _

When they part with enough space between them for him to cup her cheek, his palm is so very gentle. 

“You vant me to start vith spring of 1997?”

“Yes, let’s start there.”

* * *

The first thing Draco registers as his eyelids drift open is that he’s on the floor.

A floor littered with broken dishes and glass and other strewn items. 

He sits up at the waist and scans the room, wand out on instinct. And he has not just his wand in addition to his alternate on him but also -- two others gripped in his left hand. 

His fist tightens around them. 

The last thing he remembers is the prickling sense along his neck -- Granger’s attacking intent before she’d launched the kettle at his back. 

Did she slip out of his grasp? Why didn’t she kill him if he was out cold?

A sound -- close to a moan -- from a direction toward which he immediately aims his wand. 

But it’s just the sound of sleep from the unconscious figure on the couch. Heavy brown curls not quite smothering her in her slumber. 

Curls he’d wanted to run his hands through and tangle his fingers in -- and for mere weeks, she’d let him. 

Her curls had once spread wild on his bed.

His fist feels tight enough that it could splinter both of her wands in his hold.

The last member of the Golden Trio. The most targeted and sought-after representative of the feeble resistance. In his hold.

And he feels nowhere as close to triumphant as he should.


	14. Chapter 14

Draco’s hands delve, searching, into his pockets, but his prepped Portkey -- a wrapped packet of cigarettes -- is still there as well. Nothing missing from his possession, nothing but the sense of control over the situation. Boots crunching here and there on pieces of fragmented crockery, he paces from the sitting room to the kitchen island.

Granger’s sleeping visage burrows more soundly into the couch cushions.

She had entered the house with -- there had been something with her, before her _ Protego _ and the resulting collision with his stunner had beclouded his perception.

Regardless of how irksome it feels to have overlooked something, he has her. And she’s the crux of his mission. In his grasp, not only his wands, but hers as well, and the Portkey; nothing vital to fulfilling his orders is missing.

In the dim light of the curtain-shrouded first floor, the flicker of red numbers adjusting on the face of a digital clock catches his eye. And holds his attention as he grasps what the other numerals on the clock signify.

If the damn Muggle timekeeper is accurate, then two entire days have passed since his breaking-into this house. 

Stunners, Granger’s lightning-bolt curse, his _ Everte Statum _in retaliation...and they’d fended off the full impact of those attacks with defensive charms. Improbable that they both suffered severe enough concussions to knock them out for two whole days. 

He paces back towards the couch, a Full Body-Bind already unfurling from his lips as he looks down at her. Her dipped chin snaps up, her body goes from sagging into the couch to a stiff plank, and her awakened, flared-open eyes track his movements with panic and fear as he bends down. 

Granger’s mouth and chin quiver, muscles fighting his spell, and he draws back the Bind only for her to spit at -- well, she was probably aiming for his face, but he jerks his head to the side and reaches down with a grimace, fingers curling into her hair and around the back of her skull while his thumb -- tries to rest right above her warm cheek.

“What are you doing?” she hisses up at him. 

Draco ignores her venomous mouth, concentrating instead on the wrinkle between her eyebrows, on how her brow creases more markedly as his Legilimency needles into her.

She tries to ward him off much in the same way she’d propelled everything in the kitchen at him. Irrelevant thoughts bombard him -- she was at the market earlier, the butcher’s wife pinched her arm, her steps slowed as she neared the house because she missed being around people, their chatter, and life whereas she spent most of her days alone in this tucked-away chalet because she and Viktor had agreed that the capital was too risky. When she entered the house to find him at her table, she thought he resembled his father. If he was here, where was Viktor? Had he received a tip from someone in town, or did he torture Viktor to find her here? Did he drill into Viktor’s mind as agonizingly as he pierces into hers now? Will he torture her now, or will he leave that to his master? Will they kill her after they’ve finished, or will it take weeks, months, years until they finish?

In mounting desperation and dread, she is imagining whether a potassium cyanide pill would’ve fit in one of her molars, and Draco disengages, his throat seizing with what tastes like the threatening tide of bile. 

She whimpers as he retreats, and the nausea does not wash away as he realizes he has broken his own vow by laying a hand on her. Only to hurt her. Directly.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Granger asks hoarsely.

The last thing she recalls does not diverge from how Draco remembers the duel. He’d blasted her back against the cabinets. She’d crumpled, drawing on the last vestiges of her strength to lob a kettle at him, and after that, just a blanketing fog of unconsciousness. What she assumes is that he must’ve stunned her completely, though she cannot fathom why he bothered to place her on the couch. 

Except it wasn’t he who did so, and nothing in her mind hints at who did. She has no idea that two days have passed since their duel, and informing Granger of that fact when she’s untrained in Occlumency would only trigger Voldemort’s suspicion of some kind of collusion.

“Yes. I found you, didn’t I? Elusive Granger. Undesirable number one.” Draco sneers down at her recalcitrant face. “We all thought you were holed up in some underground bunker these past two years, plotting with Charlie Weasley and the remnants of the Order. Never thought that you’d settle for cozying it up in a Bulgarian love nest.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been more than one wizard’s dirty little secret, haven’t I?” Infuriatingly, next -- “Where is Viktor? Did you hurt him?”

“What should concern you more,” Draco snaps. “Are your own circumstances considering how I’m taking you back to London.”

Her eyes flit to the periphery of her vision, no doubt trying to find something in the room she can use against him despite how she can’t even fully turn her head to either side. 

“I don’t suppose you do mercy kills.” Her dry laugh veers towards a hysterical sob. 

“The Dark Lord wants you brought back alive,” he answers dully. He tries to imagine it. A bolt of inimitable, infamous green from his wand. Watching the fire and light wane in her eyes, life and breath bleached from her cheeks. Carrying a corpse back to London like a grim tale’s huntsman trying to appease his ruler’s bloodlust.

He couldn’t do it to an old man he’d despised. Couldn’t do it to classmates who’d earned only his indifference and disdain. Even now, when the Killing Curse might be a mercy, he cannot imagine her dead by his hand and living as a sane man after it.

“My master does not appreciate half-measures.”

“Draco.” At how disconcerted he looks, Granger’s voice seeps out even more tentatively. “Does he know about -- has he seen what happened between us that summer?”

“No,” he tells her coolly. “Even I don’t fully remember that summer. I have -- a means of burying it from his perusal.”

“Then you should also wipe my memories of you. From those weeks. Before you take me back.”

He stares at her. Logically, selfishly, yes, he should. But -- “Why?”

“I imagine that it will turn out worse for both of us if he finds out that I dared -- with a Pureblood and that you’ve been hiding things from him.”

Her eyes are dark and solemn. Seared into his mind, the memory of her eyes brighter, from the reflection of Fiendfyre, its ever-growing mouth roaring to devour the room. And still, she had looked back to make sure that the fire would not consume him when she could have fled and secured her own survival like Weasley had urged them to. 

Draco wants to shake her. Scream at her. _ Just think about yourself for once, you senseless bloody Gryffindor. _

Curtly, he nods though, and aloud, he says, “Fine. Can’t imagine there’s much to wipe.”

His left hand reaches down again, automatically, even though he only really needs his wand for this. Careful to cradle the back of her head and not her jawline, her cheek, he tilts her flinching face towards the white flare of his wand. All he can see in her eyes now is himself, a dark silhouette about to swallow up her world.

Her eyes close as the luminous bloom grows blindingly bright.

His eyes do the same as he slips back into her mind, invited this time and so much a smoother entry.

If only he could have known her thoughts before their lives entangled so messily.

_ He is under another bright -- glaringly so at first -- light. On a stage and staring down at a crowd of faces and -- himself. _

_ He watches Granger introduce him to her parents, who exchange glances. And then smiles -- knowing grins from her mother, strained attempts from her father -- as Draco shows up a second time. A third. _

_ “Heather. I’m serious. No boy, who’s just a friend, gives up his Saturday nights for two-and-a-half hours of amateur Shakespeare each time,” her father mutters in the dining room. In the kitchen, Granger keeps the sink running while hovering by the doorframe connecting the rooms. _

_ “Hmm, I caught the boy in a little lie after Romeo and Juliet so I don’t think he’s read Shakespeare at all, but you’re right. Though, we can hardly tell her to stop seeing someone in her year if we were fine with her going to that dance with that older boy last year. And her marks last term didn’t suffer a bit.” _

_ In her parents’ clinic, Granger politely checks in patients in the waiting room; in the lulls between patients, she studies one magazine tucked into another as intensively as if it were a textbook. The outer cover she holds up occasionally for show spells out the material as pertaining to economics. The furious blush on her cheeks and the fidgeting in her chair tell him that it’s not that at all. _

_ He watches her so chastely peck his mouth outside a movie theatre. Watches his own momentarily speechless mouth descend on hers for something less chaste. Tasting all the sweetness she’ll never voice. Not for him. What are words though next to actions? His lips part hers open, sharing the same feverish pocket of breath. They kiss and kiss, and she goes home that night, hand venturing past her waistband and then withdrawing after a minute, her face pouting into her pillow from lack of satisfaction. _

_ He kisses her again after her rehearsal. And then again at her play that week, slipping behind the red curtain to press her against a wooden post and kiss the curl of her mouth where she bites back a smile. Her feet slip on his shoes whenever she angles her face up. His hands slip under her Renaissance costume’s skirt. Under and up along her warm, warm thighs, boosting her up along the wooden ridge, her panting raised to please his ear. _

_ “Intermission’s only ten minutes,” Granger breathes against his neck. _

_ “Let's see if you can keep quiet for ten minutes,” he whispers back. _

_ She burrows her laugh, her smile, her then less-than-innocent gasping, into his shoulder. _

_ They kiss everywhere. She makes him sit through another movie, more rehearsals, museum tours, stilted exchanges with her friends and parents, walks in the park to get to enough foliage but not so much that they’ll make the leaves shake. How could he deem that summer as wasted when there was a girl, honey-haired and blossomy in scent and her choice of dresses that summer, testing his patience through all that and waiting for him at the end of the day with a smile for his mouth to tease out? _

_ After each tryst, she goes home and skates her fingers against her underwear. Gives up each time after tense minutes tick into disinterested ennui. _

_ And then, she is on his bed, spreading her legs, her thighs, and inviting him, challenging him, to draw out something more from her. _

_ Admittedly, his eyes then were more focused on the white mound of her knickers and couldn’t tear away at all after she’d flicked those off. He looks at her face now though, at how the disbelief morphs into curious wonder. _

_ But then, while his head is bent over her cunt, she notices the clock on one of his bookshelves. With the discipline his teenage self clearly didn’t have when anywhere close to release, she wrestles his hands away and reaches for his waistband. Her clever little fist probably pulling those moves straight from those magazines. _

_ He watches Granger tiptoe out of his bedroom thirty seconds after the garden’s siren lures him away. So she can seal that pair of Muggle tracking devices into his father’s shoes. _

_ Watches her slump against the brick wall in the alley outside the phone shop for nearly an hour after he leaves. Crying and telling a concerned passer-by or two that no, she’s not fine, but she will be if they’ll just leave her in peace to cry alone. She goes home that night and cries again in the shower. In front of the mirror reflecting her self-loathing. _

_ And that’s where it should end. _

_ How she thinks back on that summer. _

_ Except...“ _ _ I just -- watch you sometimes --” _

_ Draco remembers his resolution to never look at her again without a sneer as school started that year, and he remembers being disciplined about it. _

_ But that discipline, he must’ve sapped from her because Granger starts looking at him all the time. She waits maybe ten seconds after he correctly answers in classes. Until he’s four steps past her whenever they pass by each other in the corridors. Openly when he’s out on the Quidditch pitch. Also when he, well, starts snogging and reaching under Pansy’s sweater and playing with the edge of her skirt with only a breakfast table of Ravenclaws bent over their books not obscuring Granger’s view. She looks like she wants to fling porridge at him. _

_ She looks like she wants to cry. _

_ She does, back in the Gryffindor common room’s showers, after she finds him with Daphne in the prefects’ bathroom. Still self-loathing when she looks in the mirror. _

_ A different kind of disgust with herself as fifth year melts into sixth year, and she argues that he’s a prat but a harmless one really while Potter argues just the opposite. _

_ “I’m telling you, he’s one of them now,” Potter asserts, green eyes blazing with conviction. “In that family, you either join the Death Eater cause, or they turn on you. And they do turn on their own. His aunt killed Sirius and laughed about it! Malfoy would probably laugh about it if he wasn’t too busy skulking around all the time.” _

_ “Harry.” More often than not, she sides with Potter over Weasley, but this time, she glances at Weasley, sharing a look of understanding, before hugging Potter with soothing hands over his rigid-then-trembling shoulders. “Harry, we haven’t forgotten about Sirius. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But these misgivings about Malfoy...he has nothing to laugh about either, Harry. His father’s in Azkaban.” _

_ She doesn’t stop watching him in sixth year; Harry’s suspicions just give her more reason, she tells herself. But uncertainty, apprehension, and worry overtake any jealous flares of resentment now. Granger tallies his monosyllabic non-answers in class, his missed assignments, his absences at meals and throughout the Quidditch season. _

_ She swallows enough pride to ask Pansy about him. _

_ She is retreating, her voiced concern rebuffed and rejected, from the prefects’ bathroom, but starting to see how his self-hatred extends deeper than hers. _

_ She lies helpless on his drawing room floor, her dazed eyes reading what his aunt carved into arm. Her eyes searching for him. For the lack of him. Wondering what she ever saw in him. _

_ Not all he wades through is sequential. In one of Hogsmeade’s dimmer alleys, she realizes he is not going to unBind her and finally begins to feel cold and clear-headed enough to doubt how she’d ever felt warm with him. _

_ Looking up at Draco, she is asking if they are strangers to each other. _

* * *

Cold, smooth stone -- marble -- under her cheek. Lifting her head, a movement immediately met by protest from how her head pulsates, Hermione finds herself at the center of a bloom of gold and black tiles. 

To her right, a cowled silhouette is kneeling, the robes a black trail on the floor. A molded and etched silver mask tilts toward her, and she recoils, scrambling away from the slits for eyes and the metal grate where a mouth should be.

The mask faces straight again, pulling back its hood, and her heart lurches at seeing, recognizing, that crown of blonde hair.

Her heart vaults again as she follows the direction of that mask, gazing up at the high lectern ringed by marble pillars. Behind the lectern, a concave archway where flames lick the rounded walls golden. A hellish backlighting as another black-robed semblance of a man descends from the dais.

The air, so still in the moments before, hisses around Voldemort as he approaches. How many times had Harry faced him and managed to stand? Her knees feel like they could buckle just from how the new ruler of the land casts off a contamination, a scent like rot, wherever he walks. 

“Welcome home, Hermione Granger.” A smile. Hideous. Portending that he might be contemplating whether to feed her to the snake that has slithered down from the lectern as well, wreathing its body into a loop around the marble bloom, around Hermione. And still, enough neck and remaining body to strike and digest her. 

To his masked Death Eater, Voldemort only gestures carelessly at the door and commands, “Out. I’ll examine you later.”

A pause that stretches for staccato palpitations against her breastbone. _ Please, we went to school together. Do something. Do anything. What is wrong with you? How can you just kneel there? Pathetic, Hermione, you’re being pathetic, naive, and hopeless. He did nothing when it was just his aunt in his own home, and he’s just as petrified now. Oh please, please, please don’t leave me here. _

To her right, the sound of boots stepping around her, past her. Behind her, a shutting door.

When she manages to force her grinding jaw to look up again, a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy is smirking at her.

“I heard your grades at school were almost as good as mine,” the face of Tom Riddle says to her with a sly smile. “But you didn’t make Head Girl. Shame. Missing out on a whole year of education to tramp through the forests. Hiding like a criminal. What were you up to for that long, Miss Granger? Hmm?”

He reaches forward, as though to brush her errant curls behind her ear, and instinctively, Hermione flinches, shrinking back. 

“Oh, aren’t you a shy one? Well, I guess I’ll just have to see for myself.”

Her knees do buckle then. Her body sags to the hard marble floor as Voldemort’s Legilimency drives into her, slitting a slow deep cut and widening the breach as he rips her resistance away. Striving to defend as she would in a duel, Hermione thinks of smokescreens and counterspells. Envisioning a dome as all-encompassing as that which Professor Slughorn had cast over Hogwarts. 

_ With cackled amusement, the demonish skull swathed in robes of shadow outmaneuvers all her defenses. The Dark Lord drains the smoke until he sees a path to her directly. He fractures and burns through her blue-silver dome with a bolt that hurls her backwards. _ Against the actual marble floor _ . Spell after spell, his wand dispatches faster than hers. The curses he deigns to verbalize are those she hasn’t even heard of before. _

_ “Book-smart, perhaps,” Voldemort pronounces as he kicks her crumpled form aside to pry at her walls of bare-boughed trees, their limbs knitted together like thicket and bramble. To unearth what she guards so dearly. “But you hardly compare to what I was at your age.” _

_ He sets the trees on fire from their roots to spindly arms, until all that remains are scorched stumps for him to step over and into the clearing beyond. A humble canvas tent. From the outside, it looks like it could barely shelter Hermione alone. Voldemort’s veiny, claw-like hand parts the flap of the tent, and he looms over Harry’s sleeping form. Reaches down. Get away from him, Hermione screams, get your hands off of him, you’ve hurt him enough! _

_ But no one in the clearing can hear her. Or if Voldemort can, he ignores her. _

_ Impassively, he waits for the memory of Harry to awaken, shrug on another jumper, and head outside to greet the memory of her, a drooping guard slouched against a tree trunk. _

_ “My turn to be on watch,” Harry says to her guiltily, perceiving the shadowed bags under her eyes and how pale she looks. “Go inside Hermione, it’s warm there.” _

_ Cold-shouldering the hand Harry extends to her, Hermione staggers up to her feet and proceeds to trudge two steps towards the tent before she whirls around and says accusingly, “I don’t know how long I can do this anymore. How much longer I can stay out here, grasping at rumours and children’s yarns and inklings that don’t lead to anything --” _

_ “What are you --? Is this about Ron?” _

_ “It’s about how you haven’t fully told us why we’re out here,” she snaps. “When we could be fighting with the rest of the Order. Or helping get Snape and the Carrows out of Hogwarts.” _

_ “Of course, those fights are important.” Harry looks away. “But they’re not as important as what we’re doing out here. This is what will win us the war.” _

_ Hermione gestures an incredulous hand around the clearing. At their child-like tent. “This? What exactly is this? You tell me to go with you to one location and then the next. To read up on artifact after artifact, but what is the bigger picture, Harry? Why are we doing all this?” _

_ Paltry apology behind those smudged lenses. “I’ll tell you when we get closer to obtaining everything we need. I promise.” _

_ Staring dully at him, she finally just clenches her jaw and tells him, “You know, you’re starting to remind me a lot of Dumbledore.” _

_ Inside the tent, she collapses into the lower bunk. Ignorant of the dark shadow watching her slip into sleep. _

_ Voldemort watches her eighteen-year-old self rise again. For another day of stoking campfire, hauling water from the creek, more arguments with Harry, more resentful bouts of flicking through books and falling asleep angry. _

_ Shifting into memory after memory, Voldemort tracks her increasingly sullen shadowing of Harry. Blindly dogging his steps like a lamb to the slaughter. _

_ But still, she follows. _

_ As dawn breaks over the Battle of Hogwarts, she remains as clueless about Harry’s greater plans as she was in the forest. _

_ “I’ll go with you,” Hermione swears, rushing down the school’s rubble-strewn staircase to throw her arms around him. “But please just tell us why you’re giving yourself up to him.” _

_ “No.” Harry can’t meet her eyes. His own green gaze looks sunken and resigned. “No. Kill the snake, and then it’s just him.” _

_ Kill the snake. But she doesn’t know how. Or why the particular targeting. _

_ The sensation of plummeting, out of -- _

Her own memories.

Dazed, Hermione looks up at Voldemort’s decidedly unimpressed sneer.

“To think that they called you the brains of Potter’s operations,” he drawls. “When it turns out that all Malfoy’s brought me is a lowly foot soldier.”

He sweeps, with Nagini trailing, towards the door. “I have affairs of state. We’ll resume after I return, Miss Granger.”

The door slides an arc towards its frame after his departing form, and Hermione -- cannot draw upon enough strength to lunge for the frame as the door shuts completely. 

Her head throbs. A minute, just a minute of rest, she promises herself as she turns her cheek towards the marble. Her ear stings with irritation as she presses the side of her head against the tiles. The encroachment from Voldemort’s Legilimency undoubtedly hurts, but as Hermione’s face cools against the floor, she remembers how much her head already ached before this interrogation. Whatever Malfoy did to her before dragging her here, it’s left a needling soreness whereas the hurt from his master’s mental incursion is already ebbing. 

The only other cerebral meddling that could compare, in her experience -- Bellatrix’s Cruciatus, fully living up to its reputation of searing like a thousand hot knives. 

If anything, Voldemort’s interrogation should have hurt more. Should have lingered in its hurt.

The door opens again, a limited stream of light from whatever lies outside, and Hermione narrows her eyes at the silhouette that enters.

She lunges for Malfoy’s knees, and he sidesteps her, pivoting on his heel to sink into a crouch and seize her fists, slamming her shoulders against the door. Flattening to slide out from under him, she shoves at his arms, at his torso, but he bears her down until he’s straddling her against the marble floor. 

“If you have this much energy after his questioning, then I guess it’s working,” Malfoy sibilates through the metal grate of his mask. 

“If you don’t get off of me this instant, I’m going to knee you so hard there won’t be another Malfoy spawn on this earth,” she blusters up at him, even though he feels as unyielding as a bolted steel door.

“Try that, and I’m going to have to knock you out again, which is becoming tiresome.”

Her wrists, her jaws, practically vibrate with how much she wants to slap him. “What? You here for a turn until your master comes back for a second round?”

Breathing filtered through his mouthpiece. “I’m here to tell you to scream more. When he returns for further questioning.”

Hermione stares at the almond-shaped cut-outs for his eyes; under the mask, his irises look as dark as hers. “I wasn’t aware this was a performance. Am I being graded on how loudly I scream?”

To her bewilderment, his gloved hand comes up to brush, to tuck, the curls tickling her right cheek behind her ear, and she can feel something clasped to the shell of her ear as his finger trails the curve of cartilage there. Her fingers flit up too, past the lobe, sliding under his gloved pads as she feels out the metal bands ringing the outer cartilage. Three -- one through the piercing Nicky performed for her when they were fourteen, two simply molded to the conch of her ear. Not hoops like she would have chosen for herself, but bands just thick enough for the pad of her index to feel the etching. Minuscule, incised runes. 

Baffled at the mask that faces her, she observes in the distorted reflection of his silvered cheek that nothing visible _ shows _ on her ear at all. 

"You need to scream more," Malfoy repeats, his metallic voice dispassionate. "Or cry.” 

He adjusts her curls back to tumble over the front of her shoulder, to skim her cheek. “Or think of how one would direct King Lear's Gloucester. Figure it out. You did theatre, didn’t you?”

Hermione gapes at him as he moves off of her to stand. “How did you know that?”

A silhouetted shrug. “Doesn’t matter anymore. What you need to focus on is the next stage. Come on, Granger, you going to let him break you?”

She pushes herself up to stand as well. “No. I won’t. But I want to know --” Malfoy’s hand is already placed against the door, his face turned away as if he’s out of time for her.

“Will I see you again?” Christ, she hates how vulnerable her voice sounds. Especially when he brought her here after all. 

“If that’s some inducement for you to get through this, why not?” Unreadable eyes through the holes of the mask. “See you around, stranger.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely not 'Saw' levels of torture, but um, reiterating the general warning of violence here? ┐(‘～`;)┌

No telltale sounds of bolts or latches sliding into place after Malfoy’s exit, but when Hermione tries the door again, it doesn’t even shake in its frame as she jostles the handle, as she shoves her shoulder against it. Her hand can’t help but delve under her curls again, to trace the three metal-cast cuffs curling around the whorl of her ear, as she paces, scoping out the rest of the chamber. 

Is his extension of aid a ruse? A ploy to glean her trust while his master’s interrogation more conventionally alienates her? Or did her pleading upon her capture in Belogradchik actually reach his ears, his buried reserves of compassion in whatever semblance of a heart he has? She remembers Malfoy looming over her prone form on the couch in the house she’d shared with Viktor. No leer like Scabior and his gang of Snatchers, no gleeful triumph like his aunt or even his father two years ago at his family’s manor. On Malfoy’s face, simply unrelenting determination to fulfill his mission and presumably then wash his hands of her.

But he had touched her. His hand had lifted the back of her head, cupping the base of her skull and inadvertently warming most of her cheek, at Belogradchik. As Voldemort had just demonstrated, a sufficiently skilled Legilimens has no need to come into contact with her to trespass into her consciousness. Perhaps Malfoy’s deranged aunt had taught him the wretched talent differently from how Voldemort performs it. And yet, Malfoy must have deigned to touch her again to implant these earrings on her. Six years of sharing the same classrooms and school grounds with him, but never had he given her the impression that her physical presence was anything but a blight on the campus, that touching her would be anything less than dirtying himself. 

He has touched her more since her capture than in six whole years, and the delicate shell of her ear strains to revive how the trace of his gloved hand had felt as she recognizes this fact.

But what a waste of precious time. Hermione stares hard at the motif of gold and black marble below her feet. Not the exact same chamber that she had infiltrated with Ron and Harry three years ago, but she’d wager her wand that most of the Ministry’s courtrooms feature the same patterned floor. Along the walls around her, no visible other exit. The pounding of her heart quickens as she remembers to look up. At the swarm of ravenous wraiths above a vaporous barrier. Did they still drag Muggle-born wizards and witches into here for sham trials, or had they run out of fresh scapegoats to penalize with the Dementor’s Kiss? Never has she invoked her Patronus without a wand, and if Voldemort permits any of those shadows to descend upon her after his questioning, then she stands no chance of leaving this room with her soul intact.

Desperately, she clambers up one of the wooden benches, climbing the tiered rows until she can run her hands over the stone walls for any indication of another passageway.

Behind Hermione, the hair-raising sound of the door opening again, and a force plucks her feet straight off the ground, suspending her above the benches for heart-plummeting seconds before throwing her body back down onto the marble floor. 

Her vision goes black before colour seeps back in like a burning photo. Forget the Dementors. A couple more violent maneuvers throwing her back and forth like that, and the Dark Lord might simply dispatch of her via dislocated brain-stem death. Her legs, her arms, refuse to cooperate as she tries to move, to crawl on all fours away from his advancing silhouette. What finally disrupts her bubbling panic that she’s been paralyzed is the agony lancing through her arm as Voldemort hauls her off the ground again, seizing the underside of her forearm for examination. With terrified eyes, she follows how his nail traces the raised letters left by his deceased favourite.

“How I miss Bella’s flair for making impressions,” he purrs, presumably more to the snake that has joined him in the chamber, briefly snagging Hermione’s wild eyes. “I know you never cared for her, Nagini, but you can’t deny the appeal of her two-pronged approaches...attack not only the mind, but the body as well.”

His nails dig into the tender skin of her wrist before his hold drops her back down, the pads of her knees not cushioning her fall in how over-abraded they feel. Slamming down in front of her, a conjured book flips to a blank page. A quill flutters down, landing on the parchment. 

“I once thought I’d go back to Hogwarts, to graciously share my knowledge as a teacher. To introduce some discipline where Dumbledore instilled only the lack of it. The cultivation of discipline is why I so approve of how the new headmaster has incorporated Dolores Umbridge’s methods in managing the school. You remember Dolores, don’t you, Miss Granger?”

Hermione’s lip curls in disgust as she stares at that quill, remembering the fury in her upon seeing those blood-inscribed words on Harry’s hand.

“She sends her regards with this customized quill. Now, tell me, do you think the wand makes the wizard, or is it the wielder who draws out a wand’s full potential?”

After the parade of incompetents and deplorables she’s had for professors, he plays the part as well as any of them as he poses her the hypothetical.

“I wouldn’t say it as you do,” she rasps. “But for you, something akin to the latter. No wand is innately conducive to performing the Unforgivables.”

“Ah, not true of this one. This one revels in it. This wand which was gifted by Death itself to Antioch Peverell, to thereafter torment all wizards who sought to attain it. Have you heard of _ The Tale of the Three Brothers _, Miss Granger?”

When she shakes her head in bewilderment at the capricious direction of his inquiry, his Legilimency cleaves into her again, and her head jerks back from that inescapable reach. If she possessed any recognition of this Antioch Peverell or this tale, it would be at the forefront of her awareness. Whenever she hears a name or term, she automatically tries to place whether she’s come across it before in a book or in class, but Voldemort snarls, sundering into her mind more deeply as he probes for confirmation, and she has no idea why either matter to him so much. She’d gasp the answer he wants, any answer he wants, write it in her own blood, if only he would stop, stop, stop --

The snake-face withdraws, and she knows it’s not over when he asks next, “Why did you and Harry Potter go to Godric’s Hollow three winters ago? Why seek out Bathilda Bagshot?” 

The old woman whose re-animated carcass his reptile familiar had slithered into as a second skin. Even now, gooseflesh prickles along Hermione’s arms at recalling the horrifying revelation.

“Harry wanted to see his parents’ graves,” she whispers. “It was just because he wanted to see where they died. Where it all began.”

The displeased set of his mouth is all the warning she gets before _ Crucio _alights from the wand he’s been brandishing before her. When the throes of pain subside enough for her to comprehend that another question is being asked, she doesn’t stop crying, cringing with wet cheek against the floor. 

Voldemort proceeds to questioning her about Gringotts, about her whereabouts in the castle at the final battle, about whether anyone else heard Harry’s instruction to kill the snake. Before circling back to interrogation about those months in the forest and on the road, about the months prior to setting off on that journey. He rips back into her mind for what she was doing mere days ago, for the two years between the battle and ending up here, and Hermione has nothing to surrender but memories of a secluded house in the mountains with no visitors but Viktor.

The whole point of the Order scattering after the battle, Hermione gasps between sobs, was to survive by staying dispersed. She hasn’t _ seen _ Ginny or Charlie, or Neville or Luna for years. Infrequently, Lee would transmit a message from one of them via radio, or Viktor would bring her one of their letters, or a handful of times, Ginny had called her without telling her from where, but genuinely, she doesn’t even know if they’re all alive right now. 

“Useless,” the Dark Lord pronounces, likely sneering down his nose at her tremor-racked form. Focused dazedly on the floor, on the ornate embellishments for her personal circle of hell, Hermione wonders if he will finally leave her alone now.

But the quill twitches on the blank page, and she realizes with dread that he hasn’t forgotten about Umbridge’s little gift.

“A simple conversion problem for you, Miss Granger. How many pages would you say amount to two rolls of parchment?”

Hermione stares numbly at the page, her fists digging white imprints into her palms; the quill will turn them florid and ruddy soon enough.

“I’ll leave it up to your...endurance then. Not a complicated phrase for your simple mind. Just this composition -- ‘I, Hermione Jean Granger, am unworthy of magic.’ Enough iterations until you can’t anymore. Until you absorb the lesson. Now then -- _ Imperio _.”

* * *

She wakes, disoriented, to a parched throat and dried blood over her knuckles, her fist still curled so tightly that the veins stand out like tributaries on mapwork. At least a quill, Hermione observes with a dry croak of a laugh, makes for neater etching than a mad witch’s knife. 

More than anything, she wants water. Warm water to soothe the cuts reopening along her hand, cold to slake her now-enervating thirst. The silence in the empty room feels as eternal as a tomb’s; perhaps, the Dark Lord has left her here for more than a day. Perhaps, he has too many improvised torture chambers to check in on and will only return to collect her dried-out husk of a corpse.

Hands scrabbling against the wooden support at her back, Hermione hauls herself up to her feet and then promptly wishes she’d just continued sprawling on the floor, feigning unconsciousness, as the door opens. 

She is so incredibly weary of seeing him and his snake enter through that door. Of wishing that it were someone else. 

Voldemort’s robes trail not only the aura of corrupted magic this time. No, she realizes with morbidly fixated eyes, it’s actual blood staining the hem of his black robes even darker. He takes one look at her parted, quivering mouth and smiles.

“You must be thirsty by now. Especially with the blood loss.”

He conjures a metal canister over her head, and she sees it slowly tipping over to drip something oily and chemically sweet in odor over her head. Promptly, she focuses back down, eyelids and mouth sealing from what reeks like gasoline, her arms coming up to guard herself further.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Voldemort utters with relish. Most likely flammable then, she guesses of the liquid he's just poured over her. From underneath her wet-melded lashes, she can see his smile. “The only new books they had at the orphanage were the bibles. Muggles still read those so literally, don’t they? Hardly evolved in their ignorance. Their fear of whatever they don’t understand.”

His focus drifts to seemingly concentrate on swiping something off his sleeve. “Your little stunt over London this July has caused me no small amount of inconvenience.”

His pale fingers also come away bloody. 

“Cost me some old friends even,” Voldemort relays to her. “The Burkes and I go way back, did you know that? Caractacus, that old miser, gave me my first job, despite his scorn for my lack of name. And now, his son and others gripe at me for divesting the family of the grandson. That fool’s head split, like overripe fruit, under my hand. Right near where you stand now.”

With how his steps smear blood over the marble, Hermione can easily visualize the splatter he’s describing. The insides of anyone’s head would look the same on this floor. Is he forewarning her of the same messy end?

“Shouldn’t that give you some degree of satisfaction? To hear that I’ve pruned one of the branches of the Sacred Twenty-Eight? One less Pureblood out there hating your kind.”

She fully meets his sunken red gaze then. “I don’t wish for anyone’s death like you do.”

His eyes snake down to her arm, to her blood-crusted hand. “Still lying. I’m beginning to suspect that one of your only talents may be lying to yourself, Miss Granger.” He studies his own red-rusted nails. “I was always planning to extract something from that family though. For their lack of manners in swindling my mother. Wouldn’t you agree it’s ill-bred conduct to barter for the last item of value a destitute, desperate woman has, in lieu of helping her?”

Hermione doesn’t dare respond. His words cross into a territory, into a past, she knows he doesn’t broadcast publicly, and if he’s telling her this freely, then it could just be because he plans to thereafter execute her so his secrets never leave this room. Or, he truly feels secure enough in his power to dismiss the risk of reputational damage now. All sovereigns are born from their own myth-making, and what is one insignificant disbeliever when the majority of the flock is too afraid to challenge his rewritten history, his public persona?

“How did you learn about my mother, Miss Granger?”

He looks like he’s considering the _ Cruciatus _ again if she says ‘I don’t know’ one more time.

“Anyone who styles himself the heir of Slytherin should expect a background check,” she answers, as matter-of-fact as she can muster. “It wasn’t hard research. I just had to cross-reference public records of Pureblood families, school files, and documents at a couple Muggle register offices. After a Pureblood classmate lent me a genealogy book that included the house of Gaunt, it all began to fit together, and I realized that --”

“That my mother died in abject wretchedness after my worthless Muggle father left her to go back to his kind?” He sneers at her as if she epitomizes the class of blood she shares with his deceased father. “Perhaps you’re not exactly the imbecile I was beginning to think you were. As I said, book-smart, but nothing more. Do you know what assures me of my inherent superiority to you? And not only to you but to every wizard or witch out there, be they Pureblood or Half-blood or Mudblood like yourself?”

The ideology he’s exploited only matters to him in one way, Hermione understands with chilling clarity. The ladder of hierarchy only useful because he stands on top of it. How others below divide the spoils, he could hardly care less as long as enough survive to recognize his preeminence. But is this structure only useful to him? Or, could it be exploited in other ways?

“Compare our modest origins,” Voldemort continues, and she can see why he once envisioned himself an indoctrinating lecturer. “If anything, you had more resources. A comfortable home. Those doting parents I’ve seen in your memories. But love coddles, turns you weak. We may have started out on almost comparable footings, but unlike you, I’ve never squandered anything. What is the true measure of an individual but what he makes of himself? And contrast where we stand now. One of us rules England, and the other will knife my words into her own flesh because I commanded her to.”

His bone-white hand unfurls, towards the door, which yawns open at his invocation. “What use is all this power though if I can only exert it over Muggle-borns? Let’s take the demonstration one step further.” To whoever is guarding outside, he dictates, “Get Malfoy here. Now.”

Warily, Hermione’s eyes track the prowling, pacing egomaniac. By demonstration, he doesn’t sound like he means just additional audience for her torture.

A second dark silhouette, arriving in her periphery. She looks at Malfoy as he pointedly doesn’t look at her, instead drawing one leg into a kneel.

“Good. You came without your father’s mask,” Voldemort remarks with evident scorn, his hand gesturing as though to permit Malfoy to rise, but then the hand recedes back, and Voldemort tilts his head towards her as she shrinks back from that dangerous attention. “Do you sense that? She’s concerned why there’s suddenly another party in this affair. Why I’ve summoned _ you _here. Perhaps I’ve done you a favor in reserving the punishments for your back and not your face if even your captive can feel sorry for you.”

Malfoy says nothing, his gaze still avoiding her direction, and Hermione roots her eyes to the ground as well, furiously trying to tamp down on every traitorous leaking thought. It could be anyone; she’d feel nervous for anyone of interest to that unnatural red-slitted vision.

“Disrobe. Your back will still do for now.”

To her rapidly mounting consternation, Malfoy hesitates only seconds before his outer robes pool in black around him, the puddle growing as his leather tabard and black tunic follow.

From his sleeve, the Dark Lord extracts a blade, the spearhead silver and whetted to a very fine point. “Just look to your hand for the words. Though you can omit your name, I suppose. Unless you would prefer to mark him like that? Make him yours. Like how Bella marked you. How many repetitions do you think you can fit on his back?”

None. The muscled contours of Malfoy’s shoulders barely shift, the terrain of his back mostly stock-still as well, but her own hands tremble at her sides. “But -- he’s one of yours --”

“Exactly. He does what I tell him to do. And you’re in my grasp now too. Down is up if _I_ say it is. So take the knife and do as I’ve commanded.”

From her clammy fingers, the blade dangles like it could clatter to the floor at any moment. It does not belong in her hand at all, and another person’s flesh is not her canvas to mar, no matter how emphatically the insidious voice in her head reiterates otherwise. A spasm, an urge, in her arises to prick her own skin, if only to awaken her from this nightmare. To disassociate from this room entirely.

“Are you always this slow with simple tasks, Miss Granger?”

“I’ve just never mutilated anyone,” she says faintly. 

“Well, you’ll always remember your first then.” His nail draws a line through the air, and like a marionette, her wrist tugs forward and down with the motion. Slicing one thin stroke across Draco’s pale, hard-line shoulders. Audible exhales and ripples of back muscles, but aside from that, he could be a mannequin himself.

Force pushes her down until she’s on her knees as well behind him. This close to Malfoy, she can discern how counting the pink-rimmed white striations on his back would overflow her two hands. The slighter slashes derived from_ Sectumsempra _, Hermione gathers. The more jagged, irregular scars, she can only infer, resulted from his master’s wand or those of adversaries in the field. Across all of them, a force is conducting her hand to carve straight through.

She doesn’t want to contemplate whether she should steady herself by clutching his shoulder or his arm, but touching him while maiming him seems even worse. At least, he’s not facing her, not looking at her, while her glassy eyes track how her hand betrays her will, jerking this way and that like a toddler without control of her motor functions. Is this how Ginny felt as a child, smearing blood-dipped fingers over stone walls and recoiling, shriveling inside, at the words that emerged?

Hermione’s gashed words look just as crudely etched, but she only nicks and cuts Malfoy’s slumping, bending back, more outside the letters’ delineation when she tries to wrench her hand free from the invisible pull. When she finishes the upward curve of the ‘C’ where his waist tapers, she releases the knife with a sob before her unbound hand curls to stifle her mouth.

“Legible at least,” Voldemort deems her handiwork. “Now, turn around, Lord Malfoy. You have another side to you, don’t you?”

She can’t look at Malfoy, she can’t. Through the wet of tears and whatever oil the Dark Lord upended over her head earlier, she can see that but for his swallowing throat and dips of ribcage and abdomen for breath, he could pass for a sculpture to chisel more at. 

“What? Don’t you want to? If you can’t extract revenge from his aunt, then shouldn’t he do?” Voldemort croons over their heads. “How did Bella do it in your memories again? Ah yes. On your back, boy. You remember the position, Miss Granger. You remember it exactly.”

Puppeted again, her knees spread, drape, over Malfoy’s thighs. She doesn’t look above his shoulders as she picks up the knife again, as she watches the tip sink, then gouge, into his skin, blood increasingly beading over the planes of his torso. Where does one look during another’s torture? Away out of gratefulness that the torture is not being inflicted upon oneself? Away because looking feels akin to torture? His breathing dissolves into catches of breath between hisses and grunts, and she glances at how his cheeks suck in, even as he tries to bite back anything louder. Behind her, she can feel intermittent bucks of his hips instinctively trying to dislodge her, his legs trying to thrash. Not just self-control holding him down, but his master’s cloaking power.

An animalistic long cry of a groan finally emits from him as her knife descends to gouge into his abdomen, and her right hand shakes so much that the compulsion forces her other white-knuckled grip to the pommel as well. Another cut, and Hermione’s hands freeze again, her whole body shaking and fighting the pull, her teeth gritting so hard that she feels like she could bite off her tongue or at least make a good faith effort towards passing out before continuing. No one has ever made such wounded sounds underneath her hands before, not Ron when his arm had splinched with such a ghastly crack, not her father’s patients when she had wiped at their drooling mouths after root canals. 

Below her, Malfoy’s body bucks again, but instead of twisting to the side, the cant of his knees and thighs slide her up to his hips. Her hair curtains the scant stretch between their faces so only she reads how his whitened lips whisper, “Finish it, Granger.”

At his left side, his fingers graze her arm, five points of contact converging at her elbow. Somehow, even under daunting oversight, the touch feels comforting.

Soft. Compared to how hard his eyes glint at her, a challenge there. Like they’re still at school, and he’s daring her to prove that she’s not cowed by bullies or lesser in any way.

His lids slide closed as the knife skates, sinks, into him again, and this time, she tries to move the blade as quickly as possible -- thin, hopefully shallow incisions -- to finish.

With a gasp, she finishes, peering up at his master with beseeching, desperate eyes. _ Let me up _. If she stays any longer on Malfoy, she thinks she just might add bile to the tracks of tears, oil, and blood she’s smeared all over him.

A pallid hand presses down, near her neck. “‘I am unworthy of magic,’” the Dark Lord reads over her shoulder. “Well, what do you think, Miss Granger? Does labelling something make it true?”

Cracked and dry, her voice whispers, “It’s true if you deem it so.”

A smile stretches across that distorted face. “Finally, the lesson begins to sink in.” His smile fades as he scans his bloodied soldier. “Perhaps we should have given you the option of being labelled ‘son of a traitor’ instead. Impress upon your turncoat mother again what comes of lying to me. Get up. You want to visit her cell at Azkaban, I suppose.”

But he says nothing further, and silent tension strains the air before Malfoy broaches in a low voice, “I’ve brought you one of the last central members of the Order --”

“You’ve brought me a witch who’s been little more than a research librarian and a bed-warmer these last three years,” his master thunders back at him, arm slashing through the air. “Show a little gratitude, Lord Malfoy. I could’ve had your mother hauled in here for you to carve through what little paper-thin skin she has left.”

Malfoy’s ivory shoulders heave harder than when she was cutting into him, his silver eyes tracking Voldemort’s every movement with calculating focus. But his master never turns his back to him and moves toward the door while still facing both of them, like a parent with one peretual eye on his incorrigible children. “You may continue to send potions for pain relief, as long as they pass inspection. We wouldn’t want poor Narcissa to perish after all, would we? Keep the Mudblood here until Nott comes to retrieve her. Ah, and I shouldn’t forget --”

His hand reaches forward, and the tome imprinted with Hermione’s blood-siphoned ink soars into his grasp. “My sincere thanks, Miss Granger, for committing to this blood compact. Or how would your Muggle kind describe it? Signing the devil’s book?”

She follows his parting profile in horror before looking down at her bloodied palms, muttering in rapid succession -- _Lumos_, _Vermillious_, _Aguamenti_, other spells she’d learned as a child. Nothing manifests but another layer of cold sweat. 

“You’re going to have to burn that book to break the compact,” Malfoy tells her, his hands busy with yanking his collected shirt over his head. 

Hermione narrows her eyes at him, wary and on-guard again. There’s twisted camaraderie in being tortured together sure, but neither of them, she wants to rage and yell, would be in this situation if he hadn’t dragged her here in the first place.

That impulse immediately tapers off as she notices how gingerly, how uncomfortably, he pulls on the tabard over his shirt. What she just did to him…it rings false to regard herself as suffering through that as severely as he did. Ultimately, only one of them was truly tortured just now, and it wasn't her.

“I’m sorry,” she says stiffly, and Malfoy has the gall to bark out a laugh at her. 

“Granger, you do realize that if your lightning curse struck on target during our duel, it would’ve hurt a hell of a lot more than your hack job? Aren’t your parents surgeons or some type of Muggle healers? I haven’t seen such shaky hands since some of our classmates tried to waltz fourth year.”

She crosses her arms, her brows knitted as she sizes up how falsely nonchalant he’s acting. They’re not friends. They were never friends or even civil acquaintances. And she’d just whittled into his skin. If anything, he should be seething and spitting mad at her. 

“Regardless. I’m sorry. For wounding you all over when you couldn't fight back. Is there someone here who can heal you? Will Voldemort allow it?”

Malfoy directs a feigned leer her way. “What? Are you offering to play nursemaid?” The leer vanishes as he shrugs. “You’re forgetting that I could afford to bathe in Dittany if I want to. And yes, he usually specifies if he wants it left to scar.” 

A tight, distorted smile as his eyes lower to her arm, to the newly raised letters on her hand. “He was not entirely wrong about how you ought to get some satisfaction out of this.”

Hermione’s mouth drops open as she shakes her head vehemently at him. “No! I don’t take any sick gratification from this. I mean, yes, I’ve hated you before -- in the Manor --”

“I’m sure you did.”

“But I’ve never wanted to hurt you because of what Bellatrix did,” she insists more loudly.

”What she did.” His fingers slow on cinching the belt over his tabard. His head shakes in silent disagreement with her over some opinion he apparently doesn’t care to share. “Still a Gryffindor, despite the surrounding throng of snakes I see.”

“You don’t have to be a Gryffindor to shun that sort of revenge.”

A mirthless curl up at the corner of his mouth. “So contentious even when I’m trying to offer some bare amends. Consider the earrings part of my offering as well if you want to continue wearing them. The alloy doesn’t block the Legilimency, but it counteracts some of the pain at least. Not all, as I’m sure you could tell.”

His voice flattens to a professional, detached tone. “Under my roof, you were already disarmed, and you were barely more than a child. A Pureblood lieutenant shouldn’t lower herself by attacking a prisoner-of-war like that.”

“Under codes of conduct and convention, yes, but in war, it seems that no one truly abides by those,” she says quietly.

“Merlin, you just can’t bring yourself to ever agree with me, can you?” He crosses the distance between them in two strides, his head tilting as his eyes skim over her. “Trying to mirror some of your idealism here, Granger. You don’t have to fight me on every course of discussion. Especially here. You need to save your energy for other combatants.”

Her eyes flit up to his, and she has so many questions for him, but an even more unpredictable variable could walk in at any moment. “Voldemort said, ‘Nott’s coming to retrieve me.’ The junior I presume. What does Theo want with me?”

His gaze -- upfront and honest, as far as she can read him. “Clerical work and research, based on what I gathered while you were in here. If that -- changes, try to come find me. Or, I imagine that I’ll see you around. We’re going to be working in the same general vicinity after all.”

She feels more and more confused as she looks at him. “Why? Why are you offering? You’ve never cared about what happens to Muggle-borns or certainly not me --”

“I think,” he cuts her off. “We’ve both witnessed enough of each other’s humiliations, don’t you?”

The sound of a third person’s steps, and they move apart automatically as the dark-haired young man enters and approaches. Whereas she hasn’t grown since her school years, Nott appears more settled and confident in his lanky build. More sure of where he stands here, as opposed to how Hermione and Draco stiffen like children in joint subterfuge. 

“It feels more like a class reunion when there’s more than two, doesn’t it?” Theo smiles down at her, and then at the other wizard. “Thank you, my friend. What a gift you’ve given me.”

When she glances at Malfoy, his profile, smoothed out and impassive, merely nods at the door. “Well, what are you waiting for, Mudblood? Don’t tell me you need a leash to guide you as well.”

Jaw clamping down on any farewell she might have issued and her spine even more rigid at his abrupt shift in tone, Hermione pivots on her heel to follow Theo out of the chamber.

Into a narrow, dark corridor of familiar black tiles. From the other end of the hallway, harried-looking wizards and witches bustle towards them. Not too occupied with their armfuls of dossiers and briefcases however to refrain from murmuring and staring as she passes by.

"That’s Potter’s Mudblood, that is —"

"Undesirable number one —"

”—wasn’t even putting up a fight like Weasley and the rest of his fugitive lot—“

”—found her in Bulgaria —“

"What_ is_ that stench?"

Holding her head high as Theo’s grip on her elbow promenades her past the onlookers, Hermione waits eight paces before she twists her neck to look back as much as she is able.

To see Malfoy, with one hand on the doorframe, stagger out alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♬ What's a God to a non-believer? ♬ Ugh, I miss old Kanye. Still trying to update on Sundays. Caveat being that my work hours in November/December tend to surge to 60+/week so if I disappear then, that's why. Also, if these chapters feel like they're getting too depressing to write some weekends, I'll just alternate to the pure smut fic I want to write!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'ed by the lovely Jamethiel, who has been patiently teaching me grammar. She's also changed my worldview of the comma! If only I had known her before the SAT's...

Next to Theo, Hermione feels smaller. Smaller, not lesser. More cognizant that every flick of her hand is just that — a mere gesture. Not since childhood has everything from inanimate objects to the air around her felt so unyielding. The last time a door or a newspaper had existed as rigid constructs of fixed particles to her concentrated gaze, she had been young enough to imagine that they would move, shift, transform if she willed it hard enough. Her bedroom door had started to hinge open or shut without her needing to cross the room. Light had begun flaring above her palms at night to illuminate books under the covers. She had never looked back to reflect on how it wasn’t always this way. 

If these corridors were to plunge into darkness this instant, she’d be able to do nothing but wait. She would have to shrink into herself in the darkness, praying for no monsters to emerge—or for any that did emerge to deem her too insignificant to maul. 

_ Stop _ , Hermione commands herself. _ You don’t need magic to think. To analyze. To make things shift a little closer your way. _ Neither the re-opening gouges along her hand nor the headache pounding with every step is completely debilitating. She is still on her feet. Her mind is still her own. That is enough. It has to be enough.

She might feel smaller because Theo has shot up even more like a wiry reed than she remembers him. Not that she remembers him much. Unlike her, he’d never bothered to hoist his hand up in class. Whenever he was called on in Potions and Dark Arts’ Defence, his answers had sporadically sent her into spirals of panic. Snape used to dismiss her answers as technically correct but formulaic. In Theo’s answers, the Potions Master seldom had anything to pick at. 

Hermione consoled herself that ‘Theodore Nott’ was always listed below hers, wedged between the names of her more conspicuous rivals.

Then fourth year came. He’d partnered up with her for Arithmancy and revealed himself as quite chatty on topics of interest. He instigated chills up her arms when he’d shrugged that he didn’t really care about grades. He wanted to do his own thing and move onto larger matters. Back then, she’d been briefly consumed with anxiety and self-doubt over how he wasn’t even really trying in school. Now she realizes that she should have focused more on the latter part of his divulgence. 

She should have focused on what bigger things he’s been concocting.

Theo escorts her to one of the lifts, looking indulgent. As if she were a child. She curls her nails into her palm. The inhabitants promptly clear out with wrinkled noses on catching a whiff of her.

Her oil-soaked hair is plastered to her skull and along her cheeks. As the lift ascends, Hermione wraps her bare arms around herself, feeling even more nipped by crisp air whistling through the scissor gate.

“Department of Mysteries,” announces a witch’s voice.

She’d hardly received a grand tour of the Ministry’s level nine as a fifth year skulking about. Removed are most familiar features anyway — no more towering shelves of orbed prophecies in the high-ceilinged hall, no more glass cases of Time Turners in the clock-congested room next door.

At one obsidian-faced wall within the Time Room, Theo places all five fingers on a tile — Hermione’s narrowed eyes following his hand to note which — and underneath the arched parabola of their frame, the tiles slide back in all directions like disassembling puzzlework.

A sterile white walkway between two rows of glass-partitioned holding cells stretching as far back as she can see. Inside the glass cubes, white-uniformed individuals diligently tinker away at lab benches and some even sit at desk-mounted computers.

Outside an empty cell, Theo comes to a halt.

He’s reserved this one for her, she realizes.

Hermione stares at the cot in the corner, the table piled with white binders, and the dimensions that she could probably measure out by laying herself along the four walls. She feels even colder and smaller now — a specimen entombed deep underground and preserved in neat boundaries of glass for one wizard’s demented observation.

“You’ve renovated the place.”

Theo smiles at her with hands in his pockets, surveying the layout with an odd touch of pride. “Yes, thank you for noticing. Can’t say my colleagues here similarly appreciate it, but to be frank the misguided elders, clinging to their old ways, will die out eventually. Leaving those who are more — adaptive to the times.”

An ambitious Slytherin at least feels familiar. Comprehensible. Your master, she wants to snipe, is one of those misguided elders. “So Voldemort’s permitted you to what — raid a computer shop?”

“Ah, no. Draco’s assignment to fetch you back home has been useful for us in more than one way. There’ve been fewer and fewer of you resistance outlaws to drag back here, so he’s taken on more of the duties related to puppeting your Muggle PM. You know — keep that side of society generally functional. Until we figure out what else we can use your kind for.”

With disconcerting satisfaction, Theo peers inside one of the glass cells. His dark locks brush down his brow with the tilt of his head. From school archives, Ginny’s flat-toned recollections, and that brief illusory encounter with Voldemort’s younger self, Hermione’s gleaned only an incomplete picture of what the former Tom Riddle looked like. Beholding Theo’s strange expression, she can only suspect that he and his master mirror each other in their ability to look at something terrible and smile as though it were beautiful. 

“Draco’s so selfish with his toys though. Only child syndrome, I reckon. Doesn’t like to share. At Ministry meetings, he’s constantly discrediting my ideas. Constantly asserting that we shouldn’t lower ourselves by making use of Muggle technology. So many Purebloods share that opinion. Though, with how some of them make use of their Mudblood — companions, I’d say that attitude is a tad hypocritical, wouldn’t you?”

Hermione looks down at her feet, a tremor rippling through her. Her knees lock together, and her hands tighten around her forearms. The loose shift dress — just like any other she’d worn around the house in Belogradchik — is now wetly adhered to her thighs and hips. She will not... she refuses to acknowledge anything approaching gratitude for how this situation could be much more of an inescapable nightmare. For other captives, she hazards a guess, this glass box would practically be a welcome luxury. If Theo’s expecting any show of appreciation from her however, he’s going to have to keep dreaming of it. 

“Anyway, Draco’s little excursion to fetch you gave me the perfect opportunity to temporarily replace him in those duties. I got the chance to bring back all of these treasures before Rowle and his fanatics decimate more of that side of town. What you’re looking at are several databases’ worth of research in physics and biology from various institutions that studied time. Oh, and consider this your introduction to your new co-workers.”

Several of the cells’ current occupants look to be around her parents’ ages, and others ostensibly more senior. Hermione would wager that any one of their number is substantially more qualified to perform this kind of research. She’s never taken secondary school physics, much less anything at the university level or beyond. Is it more foolish to disclose flat-out that Theo will find little of use in her body of knowledge? Or should she simply keep tight-lipped and wait it out, buying her time until potential escape? Either way, he’ll inevitably realize her inadequacy to contribute to whatever his project may be.

His dark eyes running over her face and tightly-held shoulders, Theo directs a mischievous smile her way. “You’re actually the least — credentialed — of my collection. According to Ministry records however, you’re one of the rare, recent few to have ever handled a Time Turner. Which, in my opinion, more than offsets your shortcomings in other areas. You’ll have a more concrete conception of what we’re trying to achieve here.”

He gestures at the door from which they entered. “One more thing to show you before we clean you up into a more presentable state.”

Patiently he waits for her to turn around and trudge ahead of him. Back into the Time Room.

At the far and relatively clock-free end of the room, Theo pulls down a projector screen and taps his wand against the multiple-lensed projector. Despite how much she wants to flee from the room, Hermione ventures nearer, her eyes flaring wide in faint recognition of the man on the screen. She’d glimpsed his face for maybe seconds. Four years ago. His Death Eater mask discarded, he’d aimed his wand at Harry, and she’d Stupefied him to stumble backwards. He'd collapsed into the human-scaled bell jar that had once illuminated the room.

Magnified on the screen, the resulting scene plays back to her. The Death Eater’s head shrivels within the circumference of his collar into a baby’s head. The jarring, out-of-place crying of a baby morphs right back into the screaming of a man as his cranium, cheeks, and jaw balloon back into his fully-grown head. Bulging eyes, desperate and scared, swivel towards her. Then the Death Eater’s features collapse into themselves again, wrinkling only to smooth out into baby skin. Again and again. 

As she does now, she’d stared then in horrified fixation. They hadn’t gone back to help the man — there had simply been no time.

Time. 

“What happened to him?”

“He lasted less than two hours at Saint Mungo’s,” Theo says with relish as if reciting a particularly fascinating fact. “Irreversible brain damage and cell death from the neurogenic shock. The hospital got some amazing footage out of it though. As you can see.”

Oh god. Her eyes squeeze shut, but she can still hear the crying...the screaming. Two hours of — she can’t imagine what the man’s nervous system and organs must have endured before giving out. 

The man on the screen was dead because of her.

She’d been a murderer for four years without even knowing it. 

_ He attacked us first. He attacked Harry. We were children, and he was a Death Eater, and he attacked us first. He deserved — _

“Shut it off.” Her voice is scratchy to her ears. If the projector does not stop emitting that bawling, she is going to hurl something straight at the machine, at the screen, to get it to stop.

A baby’s crying is sharply cut off as Theo’s wand raps the projector again.

Oh god. She’d held back Harry’s wand, protesting that he couldn’t hurt a baby. That amalgam of infant and man (_ person, person, he was still a person) _ had died shortly afterwards anyway.

“Now,” Theo says, hands raised as though he’s about to propose something brilliant. “I know what you’re thinking. That case study would seem to suggest that our bodies, our base organic foundations, are simply not built to survive that kind of localized time dilation and manipulation. But — and I’m really hoping to sway you on this point — one sample is hardly conclusive. We need to collect more results under more controlled conditions. None of that hasty de-aging. We’ll decelerate the pace, take the edge off the shock on the body —”

If she had her wand, she’d like to see how fast and far back she could blast him. She stiffens her back and concentrates on breathing. She must remain calm. “You’re going to use that on other people?”

“Well, yes. Of course. Before it’s anywhere close to presentable to our Lordship. Technically, we don’t even have an ‘it’ at the present. The former Unspeakables didn’t leave us any glass shards from the original bell jar they destroyed. We’ll have to —”

“We,” Hermione says, spitting the words at him, “are not going to be doing anything together. I’m not going to contribute to this. You want to help your master achieve some warped form of immortality? Go ahead. I wish you absolutely no luck in your solo endeavor. Personally, I can’t wait to watch that evil, old man realize he’s just going to have to die like the rest of us.”

Theo doesn’t use his wand to silence her. No, it’s his cold, bare hand that seizes her by the throat and shoves her against the wall, rattling the clocks digging into her back.

Glass. She tries to fix her features into an undaunted expression as blank as glass. As Theo’s hand slides from her throat, she forces herself to not tremble. 

He traces a circle, another one around the first, on the ball of her shoulder.

He trails his hand back to her throat, feeling her swallow.

His face bends low, shadowing her periphery. “Don’t dare me to get creative. There are other ways in which I could get you to cooperate.”

This close, he scares her almost as much as his master does. 

The menacing tower of him backs away.

All he does next is tweak the tip of her nose. “Right then, Hermione. I’ll put you to work starting tomorrow. For now though, you should head to the showers since you do reek of — what is that? Gasoline?”

At the end of the hallway of glass boxes, the showers reveal themselves as a thankfully more private space. Sealed into the separate chamber, Hermione finds herself first doused with one forceful, overhead drench of water, before the other jets spray her more lightly. Crouching to the black-tiled floor, she pulls with both hands against the metal grate where the water flows down to the pipes. No give. Red marks stripe her fingers from the effort. She needs a tool. Some kind of wrench maybe. 

What she really needs is her wand. She’s practically as naked and helpless as a babe without it here. 

She presses her forehead to the tiled wall, fighting the impulse to bash her skull against it. If she concusses herself badly enough, is there a chance that they’ll send her to Saint Mungo’s? No, more likely that Theo would just summon Healers to come here. He’d tsk at her while they patch her up enough to work.

Laid outside of the shower stall, the first layer of folded clothes consists of a new shift dress. On the sink ledge, a piece of parchment had read: ‘to be washed.’ As soon as Hermione had deposited her original dress on the ledge, the parchment and her dress had been incinerated before her eyes. Underneath the new shift resembling more of a hospital gown, she finds additional starched layers — duplicates of the white uniform worn inside the holding cells. 

Theo’s eyes run over her as she emerges. Clinical in inspection. She hopes. 

“Better. Much better. Now, I think you’ll want to sleep first. Guards will be here in the morning to collect you all and feed you. I’ll expect you bright-eyed and" — he smirks — "bushy tomorrow, Granger.”

Sullenly, she glowers at the glass box, at the door he’s holding open for her with false gentlemanly cheer. Theo coughs. His hand touches, slides down her rigid back.

He shoves her inside her new cage.

Four walls and a ceiling of mirrors. One-way glass. No wonder none of the other prisoners looked up from their work earlier. All she sees is herself. Her face is bruised and exhausted. Her knees are mottled, and look like they’ll be purple and blue in a few days. Her hand comes up to her cheek, brushing back the wet curls there. 

To feel the three metal rings still clasped to her ear. Visible now. The first drench of water in the showers must have washed away any enchantments Malfoy laid upon the earrings.

Malfoy. 

A solitary figure at the other end of the hallway on level ten. Only staggering when he must have thought she was no longer looking.

He looked as alone as he did sixth year. 

Hermione stares at the water-reopened wounds on her hand. The chilling words were gashed from wrist to knuckles. They were almost identical to the words she’d carved into Malfoy’s back. Into his chest. 

She hadn’t intended to hurt — to seriously hurt and never to kill — that Death Eater four years ago. Nor had it been her will steering her hand to sink a blade into Malfoy’s flesh over and over again.

Undeniably she was the cause of someone’s death. The reason why someone had cried out and writhed in pain beneath her. 

She wonders if Malfoy is sleeping now too. If he can even manage sleep with the pain lacing down both sides of his torso. Did he even make it down the hallway before passing out? Did he — have someone here he trusted enough to help him? This is the world as his father must have wanted for him. Yet, the son had appeared more hollow-eyed and bodily worn down than smugly victorious.

What lulls her to finally fall asleep is the trace of a hand skimming the shell of her ear.

* * *

The canteen, Hermione quickly learns, is only open to the prisoners an hour after everyone else has generally eaten. The food is cold and gelatinous by then. 

Not that she really cares about the taste of anything when her heart soars, briefly, at the thought of talking to someone who isn’t diabolically evil. 

To her disillusionment, however, she finds that the guards do not share her optimism. 

The first time she tries to swivel around in the queue being marched to the mess hall and whisper something — just her name, just an inquiry about who else is inhabiting level nine with her — the guard merely shoves her forward.

The second time, she tries to catch the eye of one of the other female researchers at the table. A guard steps forward and jabs the tip of his wand to Hermione’s shoulder. A shock ignites there so strong that her head knocks forward against the table surface. Her hands twitch for minutes next to her untouched plate. 

In the corner of her vision, the researcher tentatively extends a hand — before promptly withdrawing it when the guard turns his cattleprod of a wand in her direction.

As the aftershocks recede enough for Hermione to fumble with her spoon, a sharp flick of something nicks her hand. A folded-up piece of paper bounces off to the side of her plastic utensils. 

She almost ignores it at first. A couple of the lingering, late lunch-eaters had spat in their direction and thrown bits of food earlier, but then she casts a second look at the neatly folded shape. Wings, tail, bent head. A paper crane. Just like the one, years ago, that had landed on the desk she’d shared with Harry for Dark Arts’ Defence. She remembers taking one glance at the cruel cartoon inside that bird’s creases before crumpling it with a sneer in _ his _ direction.

Heart pounding, she reaches for the paper bird, scanning in all directions for the sender.

The zap comes again, lancing and searing through her arm. She clutches her hand back to her chest with a hiss. 

“What’s that you got there, Mudblood?” The guard shoves her shoulder. He prods her again with his wand, though without the shock this time. “Hand it over before I make you finish your breakfast with your face in it. Like the swine you are.”

“‘Fraid my gift’s for her and not you, Pringle.” Long fingers pick up the crane and deposit it in her palm.

Her eyes trail up the leather bracers and black sleeves to the broad-shouldered lapels of his outer robes. Malfoy coolly stares down the guard before nodding indifferently in her direction. “This one’s designated as a member of support staff for the Unspeakables, isn’t she? And those functions require steady use of one’s hands, yes? Not that you would know, since you’ve never held onto a desk job in your life. Look at her hands, Pringle. You think that continually shocking her like that when her hands are still bleeding will allow her to fully perform her function?”

The corners of her mouth can’t help but twitch up as Pringle stutters something about following orders. 

“Carrying out orders also requires applying some damn common sense,” snaps Malfoy before eyeing her as though the zaps have already turned her slow in comprehension. 

Hastily unfolding the crane, Hermione bites her lip at uncovering the vial inside. Essence of Dittany. Golden brown like honey. She strokes one finger across an Extension Charmed-wing.

Looking up to meet Malfoy’s eyes, she mouths, ‘your back?’

As derisive as he looks speaking to Pringle, he appears even more averse to her apparent audacity in trying to communicate with him. His eyes grow flinty, and he turns on his expensive-looking soles to stalk away.

She has to bite back simply shouting his name across the canteen. Staring hard at his back, she tries to will him to turn around — look at me, Malfoy damn it — but his hunched frame is just another rigid construct, unheedful of and deaf to her call.

* * *

She doesn’t see him for nearly two weeks after that.

Every time the guards jostle her down onto the benched tables in the canteen, Hermione scans the perimeters and every corner for a shock of platinum blonde hair. His hunched shoulders feel seared into her eyelids.

He brought her here by force. He abducted her. 

It’s his fault she’s here.

Yet, the impulse to probe every room for any sign of him, any indication of where his routine around the Ministry carries him, refuses to be squelched.

Seeing him would at least be a welcome respite to the endless reading at a desk that have consumed her days. 

Hermione doubts that she’s about to understand the mysteries of temporal relativity anytime soon. Talking to Malfoy however would help unravel the more humble mystery of why he’d bothered to come to her aid. Twice. Thrice, if lying almost docilely under her and nudging her to continue knifing him also counts as aid. 

It doesn’t make sense that he feels guilty enough about watching his aunt cut into her arm that he would lie down like a lamb so Hermione could even more severely mark him. It makes even less sense that he would then proceed to act like the injury he’d sustained from Hermione’s hands was nothing. When had remorse driven Malfoy to do anything? His apparent guilt couldn’t be the only reason.

The mystery of what’s changed with him doesn’t stop hounding her. Could she persuade him to help her again? Would he say yes to passing a message to Viktor? Malfoy liked Quidditch, didn’t he? He probably still had access to top box seats for cross-border matches whenever he wanted. 

Three years ago, Hermione would’ve dunked her head under freezing water and asked someone to cast _ Finite Incantatem _ over her before contemplating Draco Malfoy as an ally. She would have checked herself into Saint Mungo's before seeing him as someone who might have reasons to not only fear, but hate Voldemort as much as she does. 

Voldemort, who’d insinuated that he’d thrown Malfoy’s mother into Azkaban for treachery. 

Unlike most of their hasty-pawed classmates who’d ripped open packages and envelopes in search of any parentally-conveyed treats, Malfoy had actually read through his mother’s letters. He would remain seated at the Slytherin table long after Crabbe and Goyle would carry off the sweets from Narcissa.

Had...Voldemort tortured his mother? Did watching Bellatrix’s deranged whittling at the Manor and watching his mother’s torture make Malfoy realize he had no taste for it? Or had his dregs of compassion risen to the surface because Hermione was now a prisoner, like Narcissa? Perhaps it still perturbed him more when the victim was a woman. Maybe it upset him when it was someone he knew from school.

Aside from attending the same school, Hermione’s mind draws a blank when it comes to identifying anything she shares in common with Malfoy.

The nagging feeling in her gut that he may be the only conceivable source of help around here doesn’t wane. 

She needs to talk to someone.

She needs to warn someone who might even listen and warn others in turn that Theo has to be stopped. From how Theo talks about Malfoy, it doesn’t sound like the two Slytherins get along in the collegial or ideological sense. Even if Malfoy may not want to help her necessarily, perhaps she could persuade him that helping her would correspond to helping himself. Sabotaging Theo’s project would be a professional boon to him.

She’s supposed to be reading the white papers and scientific journals which Theo assigns to her daily, but for once, Hermione can barely absorb the words on any page. The computers Theo likely excavated from university labs and government basements are ancient. With every hour of mindless clicks through the files, her eyes feel more dry and gritty. Her thoughts keep whirling back to the unrelenting question of how she’s ever going to get out of here. 

What she really wants to read, for the first time in her life, is _ The Daily Prophet _ ’s Quidditch section. It would be the easiest way to check for any mention of Viktor and whether he’s alright. Honestly, she’d trade a meal or two for an issue of _ The Prophet _, scantily-veiled propaganda though it may be, to find out anything about the world outside of the Ministry. ‘Welcome home,’ Voldemort had taunted her, and it’s true because up above are the London streets she’d once walked freely. Down here though, Hermione feels like she might as well have become a ghost in this holding cell, tethered to this vacuum of space.

By the second week, her back also strains from sitting down for such extended periods. She stacks her monitor on top of a pile of books as she bounces on her heels. Her eyes alternate between skimming a Cambridge thesis on time dilation and Saint Mungo’s records on a deceased time-traveler named Mintumble.

“Research is collaborative,” she argues to Theo at least every other day. “You should let me discuss with some of the other personnel. They’d be able to explain concepts more directly and efficiently. Then I wouldn’t have to cross-reference everything for accuracy and clarification.”

“I’m forcing you to dig deeper, to question your own assumptions more.” With dark amusement dancing in his eyes, Theo peers over the top of her report. “And you are collaborating. With me. Do you think I’d really be stupid enough to give you the chance to conspire with Muggles? Those who would naturally want to help you escape?”

Teeth gritting against her cheeks, Hermione darts repeated glances at his sides. At the holster where he carries his wand. It’s feasible that he could have another. Malfoy had carried an alternate in his sleeve, and she used to keep a backup as well. But if she lunges quickly enough, could she snatch the one at Theo’s hip before he whips out a second wand?

Theo creases her report in half, his expression shifting into displeasure. A shift of his hips, and his outer robes cloak his wand from her view. “I suggest you stop plotting and start working a little harder. I remember how the professors always salivated over your homework submissions, you little swot. You used to produce rolls of parchment on anything from self-fertilising shrubs to Jupiter’s moons. You’re telling me you can’t summarize this professor’s theories on general relativity in anything more extensive than one thousand words?”

“Any higher of a word count, and it wouldn’t qualify as a summary.” Arms crossed, she learns that there’s a definite limit to how much sass he’ll tolerate from her as he crosses the length of her glass chamber in three strides.

The tip of his wand slants very close to her throat and then — changes direction — pointing at one of the mirrored walls. At his command, the mirrored sheen dissipates, and Hermione can see through the glass. Straight through to one of her neighboring glass boxes.

“You see that woman over there? Her name’s Jane Burnell. You recognize the name, don’t you? After all, she’s the author of several of these publications you’ve been reading. Obtained a doctorate in astrophysics. Lectured at institutions across Europe. Then she had the misfortune of accepting a guest professorship at Oxford. Oh, and she’s a mother to three children, I should mention that.” The corners of his mouth droop in a clownish frown. 

“They’re all in one of the camps outside Bexley. Not sure if Jane actually remembers all of her brats, considering how many times we’ve Obliviated her by now. Still, it’d be a shame for something to happen to those kids, and I don’t see any reason to keep feeding them if you can’t glean anything useful from their mother’s research.”

Crumpling up her report in his fist, Theo bounces it off her cheek as he leaves.

“Let’s try to work a little harder, hmm? I know you have it in you, Granger.”

He might as well have slapped her. Where the wad of paper hit her cheek, it stings, and she can feel hate crawling over her skin. She seizes a binder. The crash it produces against her cell’s door is satisfying, but her breathing catches as she realizes she cannot just whisk away the disarray of loose papers with a spell. Hermione sinks to her knees, and hot pinpricks of tears sting her eyes as she picks up the papers one by one, clearing what little space she has. 

* * *

On the eve of the third week, Hermione decides that resorting to one of her riskier ideas is worth a shot. 

In the queue plodding along to the canteen that morning, she makes sure to line up next to Pringle as her guard. As they round a corner, she throws her elbow back, jabbing the bony arrow into his throat as forcefully as she can manage. 

She bolts, hacking coughs behind her, and she makes it halfway down the corridor before a spell strikes her in the back.

When she comes to, she’s back in her cot in her glass cell. The reflection shows her a purple-ringed eye and contusions along her cheek. Her jaw feels like it might be able to hinge open enough so that she can swallow porridge and nothing more solid.

They march her to the canteen anyway, later that day.

Stirring her bowl of glop, she keeps her good eye on all the available entrances.

Even though he clearly keeps out of sight whenever she happens to be looking, someone must be keeping an eye out for her because Malfoy comes striding past all the benched tables. 

He's heading straight for her.

At the edge of her table, he comes to a stop and looks down at her with visible exasperation. 

“What —” he demands of the nearest guard “—is this? Did none of you get the message last time that she’s not to be damaged to the extent of impairing her performance? How is she supposed to read anything with that eye?”

“It was the Mudblood who started it, sir. She attacked Pringle. Nasty little bitch hit him right in the throat.”

Malfoy locks eyes with her, and she juts her chin at him, her gaze challenging. This is it. Her moment to find out exactly how useful he may be to her. How much of a potential ally he could be among all these snakes.

Whether he could turn.

His finger crooks up. In her direction. His tone brooking no room for dispute. “She’s coming with me.”

“Sir — Nott’s specific instructions were for the Mudblood to only access certain sanctioned areas.”

“And the Dark Lord’s orders were to only keep these Muggle-borns clothed and fed as long as they remain useful. Whose orders do you think take precedence?”

The guard steps back. Hermione holds her breath as she rises from the bench, moving around the guard and following Malfoy out of the mess hall.

Cutting a path through hallways to the lifts, he doesn’t say anything to her, the back of his shoulders presenting just tense, hunched lines. None of the doors they pass, to Hermione’s keen-eyed frustration, display ‘Umbridge’ on their brassy name plates.

The office into which he leads her is six levels above the Atrium and — vast. Curiously, she peers around the space. Between two ornate pillars sits a massive desk. Overlooking the Atrium extends a window taller than her. Curtains in the corner hint at a second room. 

It’s — a lot for a wizard her age and who doesn’t even have a material need for gainful employment.

Shutting the door, Malfoy turns around to face her with suspicious eyes. “Alright. You have my attention. Now — tell me, why were you trying to seek it?”

“I want. To talk.” Each word elicits an uncomfortable twinge smarting along her jaws.

He doesn’t move closer. He's still at the other side of his outlandishly spacious office as though he’s the one with cause to keep one hand on the door handle. “I didn’t realize we’ve ever had reason to converse.”

Malfoy's still a supreme tosser then. What's he afraid of? That she might get more of her dirty blood on him? It's too late to fret about that. Her blood’s already been smeared over him, and she doesn’t fancy getting his all over her hands ever again either. 

“Listen,” she manages to say, one hand gingerly cupping her swollen jaw. She hasn’t decided whether the pain feels sharper when her hand presses against it or when she leaves it alone. “Closer. Can’t speak loud.” 

One meter is the maximum range for effective casting of _ Episkey _, and that appears to be exactly the distance at which Malfoy can bear her presence. A brisk flick of his wand, and she staggers back; she can practically hear her mandibular joints snapping and hinging back together. Her left eye waters from how the spell re-constricts the burst capillaries around that socket, reducing the discoloration and swelling. 

She sags against the edge of his desk. She must be scratching the costly wood, because there’s a sigh, the sound of steps, and then Malfoy’s next to her, lifting her bodily onto the desk. His hold briefly tucks her under his chin, pressing her against his quickfire heartbeat.

Along his clenched jaw, Hermione can smell his lingering aftershave. Where his collar meets his bare throat, the scent is warmer and muskier. She’d become accustomed to the antiseptic, chemically sterilized smell of her environment downstairs.

She herself must smell clinically scrubbed and clean enough for Malfoy’s patrician hands to deign to touch her.

He pries her fingers away from her eye. As he inspects his work with a scowl, she can only squint at him.

His hand hovers, then moves, over her cheek. 

Oh. A soft mewl of a sound escapes her parted lips. This feels...less abrupt than _ Episkey _. Milder and more soothing, like the cool spread of aloe vera gel.

Without the pain stinging along the side of her face and a puffy eyelid limiting her vision, the sharpening awareness of Malfoy’s presence prickles over her again. Hermione automatically brings her thighs closer together on the desk. If he notices her sudden straight-backed awkwardness, his face gives no indication aside from a twitch of what might be amusement playing at the corner of his lips. 

He looks...very neat in his grey suit. Well-proportioned and a posterboy for icy colours, in her objective judgment. At school, she’d idly pondered whether some people just naturally wore suits well, or whether anyone could cut a trim silhouette as long as they indulged in proper tailoring. When he’d worn his Death Eater robes, she’d avoided looking directly at his face for the most part. The lighter colours make Malfoy appear younger — closer to the boy she’d sort of known — despite how maturity has carved his face into wolfish contours. He used to look at her as if he already had her all figured out and categorized as the girl who would always be beneath him. Now, she almost feels unprepared for the full intensity of his gaze, boring into her. 

She should look away. She really should. The longer she stares at him, the more she’s afraid she might actually find Draco Malfoy sort of viscerally beautiful. 

To look at. Only to look at.

He moves to step back, and her hand snags his sleeve. “Did you heal your back? You’re still walking around all — hunched.”

“I didn’t know you were trained enough in etiquette to critique one’s posture.”

“I don’t have to be. I’m not blind. You walk like you’re still injured. Are you?”

When he doesn’t respond, Hermione jabs her other hand towards his abdomen. Where she’d gouged deep enough to make him actually cry out. 

Malfoy wrenches her wrist down firmly. Her mind short-circuits with alarm and confusion as he briskly unbuttons his suit jacket and starts hitching up his crisp shirt from his waistline. Then, Hermione’s eyes widen at what’s he baring to her — ribbons, still red, of the raised scar tissue above the grooved vee of his hip. 

“The wounds aren’t re-opening to the extent that I have to waste time frequently changing shirts. See? Confirmed to your satisfaction?”

What she sees between rapid blinks is the silver flash of a knife in her hands. The mocking shimmer of the bell jar. 

“You didn’t answer my first question,” Malfoy says more to the tentative placement of her fingers on his arm than to her face. “Why have you been trying to seek me out?”

“Because I know you,” she says honestly, undeterred by how Malfoy scoffs at the claim. She gestures at his window looking over the Atrium. “I don’t really know anyone else here. I’m not allowed to talk to anyone other than Theo. So yes, I think I can say that I know you. In a way. Enough to know that you mean relatively no harm.”

His gaze shoots up in disbelief. “Mean you no harm. After what I’ve done?”

“Perhaps I should emphasize the qualifier in my statement. I meant to say that you seem to be one of the lesser evils in a place teeming with evil wizards.”

A more familiar sneer. “Such sweet flattery. I’ll borrow that phrasing the next time I drag a witch back here for torture.”

“It sounded like — you had as little choice as I did about ending up here. We all have people we’d do anything for, Malfoy.”

His laugh rings cold and false in the tense space between them. “What about what I did at the Manor. How do you explain that away to yourself, Granger? Or, are you truly so desperate that you can look past all of that to come to me for help?”

Her fingers loosen on his sleeve, but she doesn’t let go. Between the two of them, she wouldn’t have predicted that it would be him who would dredge up the past like this. Not that he’d ever cared what she thought of him, but he sounds like he’s trying to get under her skin and stoke a cold fire. 

Perhaps he finds it strange to see anything other than contempt and disgust in her eyes.

Had she overestimated the less selfish reasons for his actions? Regardless, she’s come too far to not try deciphering why he’d given her the earrings and the Dittany. Even now he doesn't look repulsed as her fingers remain on his arm. 

“Pretty sure you stood aside and did nothing,” she says, and she drags her gaze up from his chin to look at him defiantly.

“I named you.” He says it softly, his quicksilver gaze drifting elsewhere as if he’s back in that drawing room. “I named you to my aunt. She could’ve killed you right there. Because I confirmed that it was you they’d captured.”

Hermione does let go of his arm then. Her fingers knot tightly with her other hand on her lap. That’s not how — well, when she tries to recall the exact sequence of events at the Manor now, any exchanges of words aside from Bellatrix’s hissing in her face are muffled and indistinct in echo. Honestly, she’d barely registered that Malfoy was in the room at the time.

“I was never expecting you to be the one who’d save my neck in that kind of situation.”

His eyes harden, chipped ice to match his tone. “You’re right. I suppose you’ve always had others in your life to fulfill that role.”

She throws up her hands at the causticness in his voice. “Of course you’re never going to be my first choice to look to for help. You wouldn’t be my first choice now either, but I can’t talk to another soul without getting cattle-prodded for it.”

His mouth parts before sealing back into a stern line. Compared to how casually and speedily he used to unleash insult after insult, he speaks more slowly and carefully. It's as though he hasn’t made up his mind whether to raise his voice at her or to taunt her or to speak as softly as he just did. “You’re not doing a very good job of asking for help, Granger. Shouldn’t you be on your knees or something?”

Someone else, she realizes with widening eyes, has entry privileges to his office, and Malfoy’s door unlocks almost silently over his shoulder.

A feminine clearing of a long, milky throat. 

Malfoy freezes as if he’s just been electrocuted. 

“You know, I had to ask one of the Department secretaries whether you were back from your assignment. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, I told myself, but surely, he would’ve told me as soon as he was back. Or so I thought.”

Malfoy has enough good sense at least to tuck his shirt back into his waistline and to straighten his collar before facing the door. Realizing how his deft, furtive movements might give entirely the wrong suggestion of what’s going on here, Hermione tries to quell the flame in her cheeks. On both sides of her thighs, her hands grip the edge of the desk.

The young woman in the doorway gives a little wave. Not at him, but at Hermione.

“Hullo. I’m Astoria.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, I can no longer stick with the once-weekly updates. I'm being rewarded with a higher target of work hours after the New Year's yay! so the updates will be slow, but there will be more!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only reason my wordy sentences aren't entire paragraphs by themselves is due to my lovely beta, ( ˘ ³˘)♥ Jamethiel

  
  


Astoria.

The name is vaguely familiar. A Greengrass daughter and Slytherin girl who'd been two years behind them at school. The way Astoria closes the door behind her as though she’s entering_ her _ office, and with how Malfoy is smoothing back his hair, Hermione would wager that Astoria is more than just a casual acquaintance of his.

Even back at Hogwarts, schoolmates in her year had opined that Astoria was prettier than her sister, and though it’s been years since Hermione has laid eyes upon Daphne, she would agree that the sentiment holds true now. Astoria is stunning. With dark waves of hair carefully coiffed over one shoulder, Astoria could pass for a high fashion model; one of those who could actually make structured tweed look good with her foal-long legs. 

“I don’t want to make a scene.” Astoria fixes Malfoy with her striking blue eyes. “But I didn't realise it's become Department policy to keep Mudbloods in one's office."

With Malfoy’s back to her, Hermione can’t see his expression, but his posture draws tight and taut like a bowstring. When he speaks, his tone sounds too carefully modulated to qualify as blasé. "Considering that you neither work here nor hold a job yourself, Astoria, I doubt you have any insight into what constitutes Department policy."

Astoria stares at him as though she can't believe he's speaking to her this way. 

Hermione doesn’t know either of them well enough to gauge whether this face-off is about to boil over into a full-blown tiff, but it feels like a prudent moment to slide off the desk.

"I have to head back to the canteen," she says quietly as she tries to edge around Malfoy and towards the door.

“In case you’ve forgotten, Granger, you’re a prisoner.” His attention snaps to her, his narrowed eyes freezing her in place. “No one gave you licence to saunter around here alone like it’s your own goddamn house.” 

Astoria’s eyes flare wider in indignation. “Oh, so you have to escort the Mudblood yourself? Why can’t you get someone else to drag her to her cell?”

“Because”—Malfoy cuts across the floor, stepping briskly, and jerks open the door—"I didn’t go through all the effort of dragging her back from Bulgaria just for her to outwit the incompetent guards around here. You’re going to have to step out until I return, Astoria.”

"_ I _have to step out? Why do I have to wait outside? I'm in your office all the time."

"Since you were the one who brought up Department policy, I'm informing you of the newest one: no guests permitted to be alone in our offices until it’s resolved whether we have a mole or not.”

“Sounds bloody paranoid to me.” Astoria strides out, each stiletto stabbing the tiled floor, and her mouth pursing with displeasure. Malfoy steps through the door and mutters _ Colloportus _ before turning on his heel and ordering Hermione to follow.

Instinctively keeping her head down, Hermione can feel Astoria’s eyes on them even as they reach the end of the hallway to head down to the Atrium.

“So —” she says in the lift, partly to break the silence and also because she’s never been able to curb her curiosity. “The adolescent love affair with Parkinson didn’t work out?”

“One could say the same of you and Weasley.”

His gaze is straight ahead at the lift’s doors. He doesn’t look at her on drawing such an awful comparison and continues to ignore her as she shoots a glare at him that he definitely has to feel. There’s no curl of vindictive satisfaction along his lips from winning her fury like there used to be when they were children. Rather, the tic in his jaw and the cruelness of his even-sterner mouth only become more apparent as her glare doesn’t fade. What was she thinking? Attempting small talk with Malfoy about his personal life? What's important hasn't changed. Malfoy hasn’t changed. He's still the most contemptible, callous man to ever afflict her with his presence, and he had the gall to sneer Ron’s name as though Ron hadn’t been a better person in every way. Ron was a true friend and a worthier wizard. What justice was there in the universe when someone as good as Ron hadn’t even received a funeral, while someone as despicable from childhood as Malfoy had not only survived the Battle, but could thrive in a society designed to elevate his ilk based on their pedigree and not merit?

Malfoy’s frame is a pillar of ice as he stalks out of the lift, and Hermione’s posture is equally as rigid as her glower daggers at his back. His words eat at her, needling deeper, and she wishes she could —

She presses the heel of her hand, the bony jut of it, into her right temple. _ You already hurt him—not because you wanted to. Isn’t it enough that you got the opportunity to hurt him back for countless offenses in the past and that you succumbed to it? You told him yourself you didn’t want revenge or any perverse satisfaction from hurting him. You’re not that kind of person. You cannot become that kind of person. _

The canteen is mostly empty by the time they return to it, but one of the remaining guards snaps to attention as Malfoy comes into view. 

“No more black eyes,” Malfoy tells the guard, his tone clipped and commanding. “If I have to waste my time again returning her to a serviceable condition, I’ll see to it that whichever one of you is responsible is sacked without pay. Notify the other guards. Tell Nott that if he disagrees, he can take it up with me personally.”

He doesn’t look at her as he turns to leave, but Hermione can’t tear her eyes away. Why was he doing this? Why mock her dead best friend one minute and then bother with these threat-underlined instructions the next? Why was he being so inconsistent?

“Malfoy.” Her voice rings out in the mess hall, his long strides having already carried him tables away. Halting, he doesn’t fully turn to face her again, but she sees the slight twist of his sharp-featured profile. 

“Try skullcap and Russian comfrey leaf for the closed scars. Ask an apothecary to import the latter from the Caucasus Mountains. The phytochemicals in those plants, and anything else containing allantoin, might help.”

He doesn’t thank her or even nod in acknowledgment before he sweeps out of her view, but at least he appeared to listen, and maybe now the stirrings of guilt will stop gnawing at her whenever she looks at the covered terrain of his back. Whatever debt in blood she might owe him, she has repaid the balance to the extent he seems willing to allow her, and his back is closed to her now. 

There have to be other avenues of escape here. The command _ don’t lose hope, be like Harry! _ surges instinctively before she forcibly pushes it aside, her strained eyes rimming pink as the guard marches her back to level nine. Next to Harry, she had grown almost accustomed to being lucky or being buoyed by his doggedness and his optimism whenever luck had dealt them a bad card. Next to Harry, things had always felt like they would work out, even if the three of them didn’t always have a precise plan or agree on what to do. Help from unexpected sources had also played its crucial role in saving their skins throughout the years, and that’s all she can think about now. If even Malfoy could develop a distaste for hurting people, then surely other outwardly devoted adherents could harbour some of that same reluctance. 

Surely there has to be someone else who could help.

* * *

With her mouth still exhibiting a peevish purse, Astoria appears to be appraising the state of her lacquered nails. Draco curves his wand in a reverse ‘S’ over his office door, his eyes narrowing as red glow alights along the brass handle before blue flare accompanies the unlocking click. 

“You tried to get in,” he says, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “While I wasn’t here.”

“Waiting makes me impatient.” She slinks in behind him, and her tone is airy and faux-innocent. She’s been inside his office often enough, but this time feels different, like she’s here for something else and not to pull him away from work with a mischievous smile. Her manicured hand grazes the surface of his desk where Granger had sat. 

“You two knew each other at school, didn’t you?”

What did it mean to know someone? Bitterness tinges Draco’s tongue._ I thought I knew Granger before I ever laid a hand on her. I didn’t. I thought I was beginning to truly know her after I kissed her for the first time — as the kisses grew countless. I wasn’t. How can it be said that she knows me now when what she remembers of me is what I’ve allowed her to retain? _The instant Granger had said she could tell he meant her no harm, he’d recoiled. _ What’s true is that I could become the person I wasn’t. I could become him in your mind if I penetrated it again and carved out more of your memories to replace them with ones that aren’t honest about you or me. Does that sound like a person who means you no harm? _

At his sides, the span of his fingers spreads, flexing. His hands itch to grip something; to light a cigarette, or perhaps to aim his wand at his desk and reduce it to splinters. The pads of his fingers chafe at the prospect of wrecking it without wand and spell-burning away the spectral imprint of a warm waist beneath formless white fabric. It was beyond pathetic that he could hold Granger in his arms for scarce seconds and feel somehow unsated and re-awakened all at once by a woman who kept staring at him as if he were some foreign language book she needed to translate. A woman whose fondest memory of him now was likely clouting him in the face as an adolescent. Lovely. Just his luck. Just another sensation along and underneath his skin reminding him of her with every twitch, like the scarring cuts where she’d gouged deep.

He wonders if this qualifies him as a masochist; he could lie down for a woman to sink a blade into and still feel like he had to atone for something.

His gaze drifts to the door and its brass handle. He’s known Astoria since childhood as well, and what stands out glaringly is that after years of knowing her, today marks the first time he’d ever heard her say ‘Mudblood.’ 

His eyes dart between her deceptively casual posture and the door again. Her brief display of temper today was also unusual; the words, intonation, and insulted expressions might as well have been pulled straight from a drama playbook. Astoria, as he knows her, would never have revealed that much discomposure in front of a third party she’d just met. In that aspect, she reminds him of how his mother used to be; as serene as unruffled swans. 

Sheltered and delicate Astoria, who he’d never raised his voice at, though the urge rises in him now. He’d never heard anyone say a harsh word about her. ‘Pity such a pretty face is wasted on a girl so sickly,’ her own father had said. 

Astoria, who he’s observed being cordial with everyone, but who holds even her sister at a distance. If Draco were to have his say in choosing a spy, he would not pick Granger, whose grit gave her an edge, but who nevertheless invested too much of her heart into everything. No, he realises as his eyes narrow on Astoria again, he would pick a Slytherin girl who could knife one in the back and leave the body there without tears marring her kohl-lined eyes.

Or is he giving a fellow Slytherin too much credit? If he were to reach into Astoria’s mind this instant, she would undoubtedly cry, and if he was wrong, her father would become another headache to deal with. If his suspicions turned out right, that branch of risk-benefit analysis depended entirely on whom she might be working for.

“I wouldn’t say the Mudblood and I knew each other,” he says finally with an indifferent shrug. “She had an injury. I treated it. If I hadn’t, she’d be living idly on Ministry property and off our resources without toil. We can’t encourage their kind to become even more lacking in productivity now, can we?”

Still walking her fingers across his desk as though she were playing a composition in adagio, Astoria gives a languid nod as she studies him from the corner of her eye. “I’m glad to hear you’re not following in that degenerate Theodore Nott’s shoes of indulging them like they’re some sort of darling pet. He’s very proud of his little menagerie, you know, and his new prize cockatoo. I’d be appalled—but not surprised—if he starts bringing her to one of those awful bath house parties.”

A disbelieving laugh scrapes from Draco’s throat. “Someone out there enjoys Nott’s company enough to invite him to parties?”

“Yes. Well, I’d say it’s more of a stain on one’s reputation to garner an invite to one of those gatherings. Apparently, some ‘Madam’ has built up quite the clientele of those who can’t cultivate a real relationship. Instead, those degenerates bring their Mudblood playthings to her bordello of a bath house, trade—mmhmm—‘favors’, or select from the Madam’s collection.” 

Drawing closer, Draco lifts a hand to tilt Astoria’s chin towards his in a gesture he’s performed numerous times, except now he automatically gauges that he’s never had to crook his neck much to swipe his lips across Astoria’s. She's easier to kiss in nearly every way. Everything about her is easier, but perhaps he’s always been too attracted to trouble and trouble too magnetised to him, because he asks against his better instincts, “So how does a good girl like you know about these parties?”

Astoria’s pert nose sniffs at him. “Flora Carrow attends regularly and looks a little less sour whenever she lets a Mudblood supplant whatever rod is up her arse.”

He tries to focus on her expression instead of his own turbulent heart. Astoria’s known about these parties for a while. She’s had time to process this information. He, on the other hand, needs to be alone to investigate further and assess whether these parties are a real possibility for a woman downstairs who likely has even less of a clue about them than he does. “You don’t have to worry about my attendance at one of those debaucheries. I’m very much in a committed relationship, so aren’t I naturally excluded from the guest list?”

Astoria doesn’t look any more reassured, and her blue eyes are inscrutable and clouded for once. “I don’t think that’s how their guest lists works, darling, but if you say you won’t attend, then I’ll take your word for it.”

* * *

  
  


“I want recreational privileges.”

Theo doesn’t answer at first, his eyes riveted to her memo summarising Saint Mungo’s dusty records on the 1899 death of Eloise Mintumble. 

“You keep going back to this Mintumble case.”

With the feathery end of her quill, Hermione circles the diagram of a Time-Turner in one of the many opened books amassed on her lab bench. “Time-Turners encase Hour-Reversal Charms, which can only propel users back in time for five hours at maximum. The Department of Mysteries’ experiment with Madam Mintumble is the sole documented case of someone travelling as far back as the 1400s and reliving the past for a longer period than the five-hour limit. If you think I’m wasting your time with this approach, please enlighten me if you have any better ideas.” 

Although she finds herself fascinated by how someone could purportedly withstand a second in the past beyond the five-hour threshold — her own fingers had trembled with jitters around the three-hour mark with her former Time-Turner — Hermione doubts that Eloise’s story is anything more than an aberration. _ Isn’t that just another way in which magic can manifest? _ whispers the back of her mind. Be it science or magic, numerous new discoveries and spells emerge by trial and more importantly at times, error. What if Eloise had truly found some replicable way to travel through time? Could she be giving Theo too much by steering his interest in this direction?

“Oh I’ll let you know if I think you’re wasting my time, Hermione, but this is — good work. Progress made. Should there ever be formal evaluation, I’ll be sure to note your keen attention to detail.”

She doesn’t crack a smile. 

“What was that you wanted? Recreational privileges?”

“A time and place where I can move around.” Hermione sits up straighter, seizing on the opportunity. “I won’t be much use to you for very long if you just keep me in here all the time. Having some freedom of movement and form of exercise is essential to any human’s physical and psychological well-being. If you need more reasons, I could write you a memo.”

Her cell’s barely sizable enough for full-body push-ups, but she’s started clearing the floor at night to manage sets of those, to hop between curtsey lunges and reverse lunges on either foot, and to use her chair as foot support for other stretches and exercises. The one time Theo had opened her cell door to find her struggling to keep her limbs straight in an arch hold position, he’d promptly burst out laughing at her ‘air swimming’ while she’d ignored him and kept on counting the seconds of duration. Her body now restlessly vibrates with the need to engage her limbs in more movement than merely taking daily trips to the canteen. She wants to run, to whack a ball repeatedly until she can’t anymore, or simply to do anything physical that will sweat out her caged-animal antsiness.

“Alright, you can have your exercise privileges starting tomorrow. I’ll even throw in a ball and racket so you’re not just floundering on the floor.”

Hermione gapes at him, her eyes wary and incredulous. He usually takes such petty pleasure at denying her requests: for newspapers, for books not pertaining to his project, for human contact other than his own company. “You seriously mean that?”

His eyes rake down from her shoulders, and she wishes she hadn’t asked at all for such a silly, stupid thing — _ forget it, forget it, I didn’t mean it. _

“Our new Law Enforcement Department, those lazy bastards, don’t much use the old Auror training rooms after business hours. I’ll have a guard take you to one of the gymnasiums without special equipment so you’re not tempted to murder all of us instead of working up a nice sweat. You look surprised.”

“You — usually say no to everything I ask for.”

“Because you frequently ask for such useless things, Hermione. You and I both know_ The Daily Prophet _ isn’t even adequate enough of a paper to wipe one’s arse with these days. Exercise, on the other hand, sharpens the mind and one’s ability to focus. Do keep asking in any case. I rather enjoy watching the hope flicker out in your lovely eyes." He smiles at her, and on the surface, it looks angelic. "And you never know. Keep providing what I want, and I might be in the mood more often to grant you what you want.”

Hermione stares at her binder on Eloise Mintumble long after Theo leaves. Theo had looked pleased as he left, his face smug.

He should. She just gave him what he wanted, after all, in exchange for mere scraps of freedom. She buries her face in her hands. Aside from her books and binders of research materials, there’s nothing in this cell to look at other than her own reflection. 

She would savor these scraps. She would allow herself that much at least, but she cannot afford to give Theo anything more and enable him in his mad scientist’s project. If he wants anything else, he’ll just have to tear it out of her before she concedes again.

* * *

  
  


Nestled between two glass-and-steel buildings, the cupola-crowned pavilion is immediately unmistakable. The lit sconces on either side of the door cast a warm glow, rendering the edifice of painted bricks into even more of an architectural jewel box. Under the arched entryway, the suited guard attentively peruses Draco’s Ministry badge before stepping aside.

Descending into subterranean depths, Draco warily parts one theatre-red curtain. More red curtains greet him, draped along mosaic-adorned arcades and arched alcoves. What little light there is in the hall emanates from oil burners on the low tables beside patterned divans. Sinuous movement on one such chaise lounge snags his eye. For a hallucinatory moment, the arching, rosette-dappled back truly looks like it belongs to a leopard clambering astride its prey, and then his eyes flit to the tetrahedral pendant lamps casting the elaborate motifs over a woman’s bare back. He can smell musk and myrrh in the perfumed air. Underneath those relative bouquets, he catches a whiff of sulphur beckoning from the vapour baths likely beyond one red curtain or the other. It should smell putrid, but it doesn’t. It wouldn’t surprise him if the establishment had infused the air with some potion-adapted-perfume to entice business down here.

“Doth my eyes deceive me, or has Draco Malfoy strayed into my humble bath house?” A lace-masked redhead sinuously sways closer to him.

“Mine eyes.”

“Pardon?”

“The phrasing originates from a — playwright. It’s supposed to be ‘mine eyes deceive me.’”

“Well,” she says with a scoff. “I see prissy Greengrass has sucked all the fun out of you. Or is the lack of sucking in your relationship the reason you’re here? Let me guess, she just lies there, stiff as a board, and takes it without a sound?" She moves closer, draping her hand over his chest to stroke his collarbone. "If I’d known that you were interested in something on the side, I’d have put you on the guest list long, long ago.”

He flashes her the smile that every woman he’s ever been with has told him is his bullshit smile. “Actually, your exclusive guest list is what I’m interested in. Though I must say, I didn’t expect you to be running this establishment. Really, Edgecombe, does your mother know this is how you’re making your Galleons?”

“Half of my clientele consists of Ministry badge-ers like yourself, and they only get to come my way after dear mummy’s vetted them as discreet enough.” Marietta tosses her reddish curls over her shoulder before smirking coyly at him again. “You sure you don’t want to try out our baths? You didn’t bring anyone, so I’d be happy to lend you a witch for a dip or soak. Or would you prefer a wizard? Or Veela? Oooh, or do you want to act out your deepest, filthiest fantasies and try a Mudblood? You can do that here, you know. Wash after, walk out clean, and not a soul outside these walls would ever know.”

His bland smile holds over. “Like you wouldn’t blackmail me the first chance you get.”

Marietta laughs, and he pretends to as well, but his gaze drifts over her shoulder to one of the curved-back divans partially visible behind a parted red curtain. The hazy apparition of a bare back, dusted by curls — they’d be chestnut-brown under this lighting, maybe closer to the sheen of honey when right underneath the lamps — flashes over his eyes. A head of brown curls lifting up from the cushions, a languid smile his way, and a bare warm waist revealing its curve and taper as she rouses to sit up. 

_ You’ve only seen her like that because she looked at someone else that way. Because you stole that memory. _

He fucking hates inhaling the air in here. “Anyone else from our year pay a visit to your establishment recently?”

“Now you’re fishing, and I already told you, we’re discreet here.”

“So companionship is available for purchase, but not political dirt? Come on, Edgecombe. You’ve got to diversify your portfolio of services. I know Flora Carrow’s a regular. What about Hestia? Pike? Graham Montague?”

“All Slytherin names. What happened to house loyalty?”

“I’ll have you know that quite a few breeds of snakes have no qualms about devouring each other. Or what about Nott? He ever pay this place a visit?”

Framed by the cut-outs of her lace mask, Marietta’s eyes acquire a slightly mad glint. “I sorely wish he would. The Dark Lord gave him Hermione Granger, did you hear that? If Theodore Nott ever brought her here to play with, you’d know. Everyone would know because I would carve exactly what I think about that Mudblood into her forehead and across her insipid little mug. Granger better pray on her fucking knees that she never ends up under my roof.” She pauses for a deep breath. “What were those other names you mentioned?”

Draco ignores her, already climbing the stairs, tearing at his collar to breathe fresh air and cleanse his lungs, hastening to never step foot in there again. Why would he ever have reason to? He is with someone now, someone who needs his help in her own way, and who doesn’t have enemies lurking in every corner, waiting to sink their claws into her. 

He stops counting how many streets it takes for him to stop seeing an arching back, skin cloaked only by dappled patterns of shadow and light; a different girl disrobing and looking over her shoulder at him.

By the time his feet come to a halt due to disintegrated pavement, he is numbly facing what remains of the once-verdant periphery of a park.

Their bark blackened by char, the trees have been razed down to their exposed roots. 

This sector of London appears almost evacuated and eerily quiet. The townhouses here have more slurs wand-burnt into their once-pristine edifices than they do lit windows. Lining what remains of the sidewalks are vehicle carcasses and uncollected trash. More haphazardly strewn are personal belongings — luggage, bundled clothing, children’s toys — dropped and abandoned.

He’s said some of those things tarnishing these walls.

He’s read from the safety of his Ministry office how some of this unfolded.

He’s been assigned to some of the clean-ups for these attacks and round-ups, Obliviating those still screaming and the local Muggle authorities who showed up less and less often. Does anyone even read his Ministry reports other than to note with satisfaction which wealthier Muggle’s home has been cleared for seizing?

It shouldn’t be him walking these streets and having the freedom to do so without being stopped. In any just universe, it wouldn’t be him, but in this one, he's flashing his Ministry credentials before descending back underground to shut his eyes from the scorched earth above.

* * *

  
  


The ball that the guard shoved at her turns out to be, to Hermione’s considerable dismay, a practice Bludger. In its wooden case, it had appeared like any other ball, but the second her hand had touched it to pick it up, it had rocketed from its confines to begin ricocheting across the room and occasionally denting a wall or two.

The first time it had catapulted her way, she’d brandished her racket like a sword. Not that such wielding was of any use since the Bludger had still fractured off a solid third of the racket’s bumper guard. After that, she’d resorted to crouching and hiding behind the wand targets interspersed throughout the training room while trying to figure out how to immobilise the bewitched ball. 

She doesn’t even know if the guard will return to fetch her at the end of the one hour she’s been allotted, or if he’s simply waiting down the hall to eventually check on whether the Bludger’s bashed in her skull yet. Hunkered behind her current shield of a target mannequin, she counts around a minute since she’s last heard the Bludger break something in the room. She’s beginning to suspect that this one’s animating charm has been tweaked to reserve its missile-like behaviour for whenever it detects the trigger of motion. 

With a flash of green light around its frame, the vault-like door to the training room unlocks, and Hermione sprints for the exit before it even fully opens.

She nearly skids to a stop upon seeing the white-blond head that emerges, but self-preservation overrides her surprise. “Get out of the way, Malfoy!”

“Granger. What are you —”

Evidently he hasn’t lost his Quidditch reflexes because Malfoy shoves her to the floor, rolling her to the side, and mantling her back with his front as the Bludger dimples the door shut. Another thump against the far end of the room is all that announces the Bludger rebounding back towards them, and Malfoy’s wand whips out, slashing at the iron sphere, which crashes into the ground before rolling more dully like a normal ball.

Sprawled under his chest and right arm, Hermione exhales in relief. With the following breath, it inescapably dawns on her that Malfoy smells different. A headier, muskier fusion of scents overlaying the solid slab of his torso. He doesn’t smell like he just came from his office. If he’s heading somewhere, it’s likely not to work. Her set of distributed clothes this week had included a sleeveless top for her, and through its thinner cotton, she can keenly feel the heat of his skin. More alarmingly, she can feel the cut of his hips against her arse as his thighs cage her own, and that is more than enough of a realisation to buck up in panic — and no, that's not the right thing to do either because she can even feel the gravelly sound of surprise from his chest. It takes two shoves of her elbow before Malfoy gets the message to lift his arm for her to scramble out and onto her feet. 

He rises more slowly, albeit more elegantly. “What are you doing in here? No one outside of Magical Law Enforcement is authorised to use these rooms.”

Nervously, her hands flit to tighten her hair tie, and Malfoy’s eyes follow the bare stretch of her arms. “Theo said that I could use this room at night since no one really trains this late. Will my coming here be a problem?”

Malfoy’s expression suggests that her entire existence is, yes, very much of a problem. His sharp eyes flicker to her discarded and mangled racket. “You’re not a field agent, Granger. What do you need to use this room for?”

She throws up her hands before smoothing back her frazzled hairline and wild ponytail again. She feels oddly flushed, like she’s just run two circuits around the room rather than just crouching and hiding all over the place. “I’m locked in a cell for almost twenty-two hours a day. It’s begun to feel like a coffin, and I don’t even exist outside of it. I just wanted to move. Run. Do something outside of that box.”

The bemused furrow between his brows doesn’t flatten. “Narrowly avoiding a Bludger-inflicted concussion falls under those sought-after activities?”

“No! I don’t think Theo intended for me to get my hands on a Bludger. I thought I was just going to get a normal ball and racket, but one of the guards gave me that case. It could’ve been Theo though. I don’t know — he seemed somewhat satisfied with my performance recently, and he said I should ask for the things I want. But it wouldn’t surprise me either if this is his sadistic way of chastising me for asking.”

Malfoy’s intense eyes remain on her for a long moment, long enough that awkwardness leads her to cross her arms. He clears his throat, his gaze flickering before focusing over her shoulder. He looks and sounds irritated, though for once not so much at her specifically.

“Well, we can’t always have what we want,” he says. His eyes return to move over her slowly, cataloguing her, pinning her down. “Especially you with how easily you seem to accumulate enemies. You’re already here, however, so for tonight, have at it.” Extending his arm imperiously, he summons the tennis racket to his grasp, muttering _ Reparo _ under his breath. He swings it brusquely, testing the restoration in a motion graceful to her envious eyes despite him likely having never engaged in the sport before. The next flourish of his wand transfigures the Bludger into a crisply new and fluorescently yellow ball, springy to the touch as he drops it into her hand. 

She can’t even recall an instance of him passing her an ingredient in Potions without his expression suggesting that she should’ve been retrieving it from his feet. 

“You’re not worried that I’m going to contaminate all your training equipment in here?”

“If you and your hands were carrying some strain of contamination, I’d have already caught it.”

_ Who could have predicted that Draco Malfoy could be...somewhat decent when he no longer regards you as a pesky menace to his school ranking and has no posse around to impress with his swaggering? _

He tersely nods and turns to leave, and she stares at him with baffled wide eyes. 

She doesn’t understand him at all now. 

What petrifies her, despite the frenetic uptick in her heartbeat and the surge of adrenaline infusing her veins, is that — she might want to. 

* * *

  
  


Draco doesn't down more than one drink with his former Housemates often these days. He’s here tonight, though, at Adrian Pucey’s London home with his black-suited elbows on the raised rail of the card table. His eyes are on his cards, but his ears are listening for any appearance of latecomers.

His thumb flips one chip to the back of the stack in his hand impatiently, repeating the shuffle with quickening momentum as the players present and seated remain the same. Blaise is at a diagonal from Draco. Scattering his chips on the baize playfield is Pucey. Flint blatantly glances over the dealer’s arm while Goyle nurses his scalded fingertips in a crystal-cut glass. Cassius Warrington’s presence is reduced to little more than decoration as he folds again and again.

The distinctive crack of Apparition emits from the foyer — fucking finally. 

“Apologies for my tardiness, gentlemen.” Theo strides into view with a falsely contrite countenance. 

“Who the fuck invited the Mudwallower?” says Flint, elbowing Pucey with a scowl.

Blaise’s eyes briefly intersect with Draco’s across the table. “That would be my doing. It’s high time we get some fresh fortunes in here to deplete. Let’s mix it up to keep it entertaining, hmm? Dealer, Bavarian rules this round of Snap and new bets across the table. Draco, you bold enough to wager Astoria’s company for twenty-four hours? I must confess, I’ll never shed my fondness for waking up to eyefuls on either side. You know, because it keeps both sides of the bed warm. And the tantalising prospect of sisters —”

“You could probably rope in Daphne for a night or two, Blaise, but Astoria would skewer you, and I’d greatly mourn collecting your gold at these tables.”

“I want to hear what Nott has to wager,” Flint says, pointing his hand of cards at the newcomer. 

“Let’s hear it, Theo. You have anything interesting to wager other than one of your Mudbloods?”

  
“Is an hour in his gallery of curiosities on the table? I think the chance to give Granger a pretty pearl necklace is worth a stack or two,” says Adrian, laughing as his fingers stroke a short stack of chips. “What? Don’t look at me like that, Flint. You don’t have to touch a Mudblood to wank all over her face.”

“Keep wanking away in your dreams.” Theo cuts Adrian off from whatever Adrian was going to say next. His smile and tone are droll, but Theo’s eyes are dead serious. “Granger’s...easily distracted. I’m not about to have her crying and traumatised by your bits — and I do mean it when I say they’re just bits, Adrian — when we’ve finally made some progress on the project.”

“Oh yes, the all-important ‘project’,” Adrian says, fingers pincering in air quotes. “You know, after what our Lordship did to Burke for just thinking some perfectly reasonable thoughts, I wonder myself why we have to constantly bend over for some Halfblood —”

“Pucey!” Multiple players hiss at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

Silence reigns for strained seconds in the room before Adrian says mulishly, “I think I’d know if my own house was bugged. Whatever. Let’s fucking play.”

Eyes on the cards being dealt out, Draco asks, “So, Theo, the research is going well?” He doesn't raise his eyes but remains aware of Nott in his peripheral vision. He forces himself to not tense or shift his posture.

“I’d say so. The guards estimate there’s been a lessening in the need for motivating shocks.” Theo flashes him a flippant grin. “What’s it to you, Draco?”

“As it so happens, I’m elbows-deep in a research project myself. The Dark Lord’s instructed me to look into the development of a panacea again, and I could use a research assistant to shoulder more of the burden. Especially one who has some familiarity with potion ingredients beyond our borders.” Draco actually does feel relaxed as he says this. The muscles along his torso no longer twinge in pain with every movement. Granger’s advice about plastering skullcap and comfrey over his gashes had worked. Before her input, he’d sullenly soaked through two weeks of Dittany and other herbal-infused baths. Yet the spasms of pain kept stabbing through his reopening wounds, and Draco had felt inclined to curse anyone who looked at him the wrong way.

Theo’s narrowed gaze flickers down to the stacks of chips in front of Draco before darting to the other stacks around the table for comparison.

“So what do you say to a wager of two hours a day of your newest acquisition’s precious time? For research purposes only, I promise.”

“I thought I just made myself clear,” Theo says. He doesn't raise his voice, but the steel underlying his words is unmistakable. “She’s useless to me distracted, and a side project assuredly qualifies as distracting.”

“What, she can’t multitask? This is Granger we’re talking about. She could probably devour the research that’s already out there and systematise it into tabbed and colour-coded files by the time we’ve drunk a couple of afternoons away. Where’s your grievous loss? Two hours out of a day. No more than a session of Double Potions used to be.”

“Maybe if you stop hoarding your Mudbloods so much,” Blaise says, casting Nott a sidelong glance. “We’ll stop calling you a Mudwallower all the time. Don’t lose your sense of propriety, Theo. If anything, we’re watching out for you. People are damn angry about what happened to Burke, and talk has turned to you and how proud you are of your project.”

“Your call, Theo,” Draco says idly before furrowing his brow and bringing one hand to his temple as though he were contemplating his cards. Exploding Snap, he decides, is a thoroughly mindless game, but he knows his reflexes honed in the field give him a faster reaction time and an edge over everyone else at the table. Theo spends nearly all his time in a laboratory and doesn’t regularly play. Moreover, Draco’s running count of the deck tells him that there’s a fraction of a chance that Theo’s hand has anything other than a high concentration of mismatched cards and odd-numbered sets of Bowtruckle cards. 

“However, I can’t say that I’m much interested in winning tracts of your old man’s farmland, so if you don’t get up in the next five seconds, I’m going to consider a stake in Granger’s time as on the table.” Draco leans back in his chair, his hand lazily drumming his accordion of cards against the playfield.

Theo’s calculating eyes cut his way. “What do you have to offer?”

“My mother’s suite of Lalique glassware, handcrafted by the original master himself.”

Theo scoffs, and the other Slytherins trade bemused looks. “I’m not as selective about what I drink from as you are, Malfoy.”

“Well you don’t have to drink from it. The sand and quartz come from a particular quarry, now defunct. Sadly. Especially since the Ministry used to order shipments from the same quarry for their forging of Time-Turners. So if you don’t want to drink in style, you could just melt it down for other uses.”

“I doubt the source of sediments matters much for magic-imbued vessels.”

Draco flashes him a derisive smile. “Sure, and crushed Sopophorus bean is the same as the bean cut. Come on, Theo. How did you get into Advanced-Level Potions with that attitude?”

Behind his barricade of chips, Theo doesn’t get up and nods begrudgingly. He flicks down his cards with a shake of his head like he’s already regretting it. Simultaneously, his wand flips over all the cards he’d tapped on the table. Odd numbers of Bowtruckles, Giant Squids, and a solitary Manticore card. Pounding fists and jeering crows of laughter ripple forth from the players along the rim of the table as the cards start sizzling at the edges. 

_ Ask for the things you want _, a voice echoes in the back of Draco’s head as he reveals his own hand — two sets of four of a kind — and tries to suppress a smirk. 

_ No, Granger, I’m going to take what I want _.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (◞‸◟；) I cannot apologize enough for how long it's taking me to write, but for those of you who've stuck around to reach this note, thank you!!


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